I discovered at the age of six that everything was a phony, worked with mirrors. Since then, I've always wanted to be a magician.

I dont believe in learning from other peoples pictures. I think you should learn from your own interior vision of things and discover, as I say, Innocently, as though there had never been anybody.

Criticism is the essence of creation.

A good artist should be isolated. If he isn't isolated, something is wrong.

In attempting to explain F For Fake's state-side failure, it has occurred to me that perhaps the subject matter was at least partially to blame, and that this country is so blissfully enslaved by the notion of the special sanctity of the expert that an overtly anti-expert film was bound to go too much against the national grain.

I have wasted the greater part of my life looking for money and trying to get along, trying to make my work from this terribly expensive paintbox, which is a movie. And I've spent too much energy on things that have nothing to do with making a movie. It's about two percent moviemaking and ninety-eight percent hustling. It's no way to spend a life.

Hollywood expects you to experiment but on a film that makes money and if you don't make money, you're to blame. Your job is to make money.