I subscribe to William Faulkner's' view that history is not just about what we were before but who we are now.

Nothing in our daily life offers more of the comfort of continuity, the generational connection of belonging to a vast and complicated American family, the powerful sense of home, the freedom from time's constraints, and the great gift of accumulated memory than does our National Pastime.

The way I work, the interview never becomes larger than the person being interviewed.

Jazz is a very accurate, curiously accurate accompaniment to 20th century America.

In a sense I've made the same film over and over again. In all of them I've asked, 'Who are we as Americans?

There are no ordinary lives.

I'm a filmmaker. I'm an artist. I've chosen to work in history the way someone might choose to work in still lifes or landscapes.