Some people demand a five-line capsule summary. Something you'd read in a magazine. They want you to say, 'This is the story of the duality of man and the duplicity of governments.' I hear people try to do it -- give the five-line summary -- but if a film has any substance or subtlety, whatever you say is never complete, it's usually wrong, and it's necessarily simplistic: truth is too multifaceted to be contained in a five-line summary. If the work is good, what you say about it is usually irrelevant.

The first really important book I read about filmmaking was The Film Technique by Pudovkin. This was some time before I had ever touched a movie camera and it opened my eyes to cutting and montage.

A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction.

The most terrifying fact about the universe not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent

I don't like doing interviews. There is always the problem of being misquoted or, what's even worse, of being quoted exactly.

Regret isn't going to get me anywhere. It's like being obsessed with something. It doesn't bring you anywhere.

Perhaps it sounds ridiculous, but the best thing that young filmmakers should do is to get hold of a camera and some film and make a movie of any kind at all.