I am so used to plunging into the unknown that any other surroundings and form of existence strike me as exotic and unsuitable for human beings.

You can fight a rumour only with an even wilder rumour.

You will learn more by walking from Canada to Guatemala than you will ever learn in film school.

The daredevil aspect to what I did there is moving a monstrously big ship over a mountain in the jungle of Peru with 800 or 900 or so native people from the area. So that idea was wild but the way it was executed was prudent. Nobody was ever hurt and when it became clear that we had to be more secure with the posts that would hold the ship, I spent 12 days having a post built that would have withstood the force of 10 times the weight of my ship.

The universe is not harmonious: you know that by looking outside.

Film is not analysis, it is the agitation of mind; cinema comes from the country fair and the circus, not from art and academicism.

I'm trying to find these rare moments where you feel completely illuminated. Facts never illuminate you. The phone directory of Manhattan doesn't illuminate you, although it has factually correct entries, millions of them. But these rare moments of illumination that you find when you read a great poem, you instantly know. You instantly feel this spark of illumination. You are almost stepping outside of yourself and you see something sublime.