Errol Morris

“A movie is like a tip of an iceberg, in a way, because so little of what you do in connection with making a movie actually gets into the movie. Almost everything gets left behind.”

“I think an interview, properly considered, should be an investigation. You shouldn't know what the interview will yield. Otherwise, why do it at all?”

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it without a sense of ironic futility.”

“I've never made any money off of any of my films. Statement of fact. So without commercial work, I would be in big trouble.”

“Forty years ago this country went down a rabbit hole in Vietnam and millions died. I fear we're going down a rabbit hole once again - and if people can stop and think and reflect on some of the ideas and issues in this movie, perhaps I've done some damn good here!”

“I think calling someone a character is a compliment.”

“Certain kinds of intimacy emerge on a phone call that might never occur if you were sitting right next to the other person.”

“Do I like tawdry, sleazy stories? Yeah, I do.”

“If you're a journalist - and I think, on some level, I'm a journalist, and proud to be a journalist, or a documentarian, however you want to describe it - part of what I do has to be the pursuit of the truth.”

“If we're reading a first-person account, we know that each and every one of us, myself included, have a great desire to be seen in a certain way, or to be perceived in a certain way. It's unavoidable.”

“Listening to what people were saying wasn't even important. But it was important to look as if you were listening to what people were saying. Actually, listening to what people are saying, to me, interferes with looking as if you were listening to what people are saying.”

“What's great about documentary, it seems to me, is that it can be experimental filmmaking. You have a license to do a lot of diverse things under the umbrella of 'documentary.'”

“If you think you're going to create an unposed photograph, think again. There is no such thing.”

“I believe it was probably less than ten minutes that went by from the invention of photography to the point where people realized that they could lie with photographs.”

“Maybe existence is ultimately a lonely thing.”

“I like to think that I'm nonjudgmental, that I can listen and be engaged by almost anything.”

“But I can say what interests me about documentary is the fact that you don't know how the story ends at the onset - that you are investigating, with a camera, and the story emerges as you go along.”

“A lot of stories that have fascinated me are tabloid stories that have come from other newspapers, like 'The New York Times.'”

“The proper route to an understanding of the world is an examination of our errors about it.”

“But one of the amazing things about documentary is that you can remake it every time you make one. There is no rule about how a documentary film has to be made.”