Write: write letters. Keep journals. Besides your children, there is no surer way of achieving immortality.

You need, as a historian, essential triangulation from your subject and the only way you get that triangulation is through time.

One of the things I really like about Ford's films is how there is always a focus on the way characters live, and not just the male heroes.

When a documentary filmmaker, working in the style that I do, suggests that there has been a shooting ratio of 40 hours to every one hour of finished film, that doesn't mean that the other 39 are bad.

When you are editing, the final master is Aristotle and his poetics. You might have a terrific episode, but if people are falling out because there are just too many elements in it, you have to begin to get rid of things.

There is no communication in this world except between equals.

I think my expectations for myself are much more severe and much more direct. You can't work on a film for six years without being your own toughest critic. So you can't really be distracted by the expectations based on your previous performance.