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.

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!

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

But there's a big difference between, say, reporting on a story and simply making up a story.

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

Despite all of our efforts to control something, the world is much, much more powerful than us, and more deranged even than us.

Ecstatic absurdity: it's the confrontation with meaninglessness.

Films are neither true nor false. That includes my films, as well as others. They may make claims that are true or false, but films are too complex. They have too many ingredients.

First of all, tabloid stories are some of the richest and most important stories that we have. There's nothing wrong, per se, with tabloid stories.

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.

I don't believe truth is conveyed by style and presentation. I don't think that if it was grainy and full of handheld material, it would be any more truthful.

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?

I think calling someone a character is a compliment.

I used to work as a private detective years and years ago.

I've never had any problem with crazy people. I like crazy people; I probably am a crazy person myself.

If everything was planned, it would be dreadful. If everything was unplanned, it would be equally dreadful.

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

Maybe existence is ultimately a lonely thing.

My advice to all interviewers is: Shut up and listen. It's harder than it sounds.

People lie, and they always are very very creative in finding new ways to lie.

Photographs can reveal something to us, and they can also conceal things.

We all know that yellow journalism didn't just happen a week ago or a month ago, that yellow journalism has probably been with us as long as journalism has been with us.

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.'

When 'The Thin Blue Line' came out, I was criticized by many people for using reenactments, as if I wasn't dedicated to the truth because I filmed these scenes. That always and still seems to be nonsensical.

My romantically favorite era is 78, 79 listening to Grandmaster Flash and the Furious 4, the live tapes, echo chamber and break beats.

So our ears got used to listening to jazz in the place that it was that the bass player could not play. No one really realized it and really addressed it until the bass players who could play their instrument came along and started doing something with it.

I love listening to Radio Head's 'Everything in its Right Place' because it's all major chords, it makes you feel really good. It's soothing, it's got a beautiful voice, crazy textures. When I'm down I listen to that song and it really makes me feel good.

I have a 6-year-old, and his thing is to turn on Radio Disney in the car, and I get such an allergic reaction to listening to that music and the context into which it falls. I'm really working on him about that.

Fancy your having no sunshine in London yesterday! Here it was glorious, like full summer, and I sat up with the window wide open, listening to the discourse of two amorous thrushes.

I was growing up listening to Queen. Freddie Mercury threw those incredible melodies into his songs.

I just love listening to the laughter.

I was up until all hours of the night, listening to stories, meeting great old comedians.

There are many benefits to this process of listening. The first is that good listeners are created as people feel listened to. Listening is a reciprocal process - we become more attentive to others if they have attended to us.

I started listening to music when I wrote when I had three sons at home.

My playing started to develop through the Miles Davis stuff I was listening to.

The storytelling gift is innate: one has it or one doesn't. But style is at least partly a learned thing: one refines it by looking and listening and reading and practice - by work.

Any problem, big or small, within a family, always seems to start with bad communication. Someone isn't listening.

Whatever had been on the radio in the '60s; I mean we were always listening to the radio.

Because of the changes in the Padres team I played with last year, I felt like a veteran recently when I worked out with Jason Kendall and he told me he's liked listening to my records since he was a kid!

I think listening to real classic soul material made me learn how to feel music that's sung.

All of my style came from listening to records.

I had to be at least 8 or 9; I was listening to everything on the radio. You name it, I heard every song.

You can do and use the skills that you have. The schools need you. The teachers need you. Students and parents need you. They need your actual person: your physical personhood and your open minds and open ears and boundless compassion, sitting next to them, listening and nodding and asking questions for hours at a time.

Indeed - judicious, consistent parenting is a dream of mine. No judgements, learning space and listening carefully are my goals.