“If you’re looking for the origins of film culture in America, look no further than Amos Vogel.”

“Amos Vogel was a mentor, a guiding light for me. In his presence, you always rose. But his importance to me is of minor significance. What is significant is that with him an entire epoch ends. The Last Lion has left us.I am still not capable – or rather unwilling – to understand the fact that Amos passed away, because a man like him cannot be dead. His traces are everywhere.(on the passing of Amos Vogel, his friend for more than 45 years)”

“I look at the human sciences as poetic sciences in which there is no objectivity, and I see film as not being objective, and cinema verite as a cinema of lies that depends on the art of telling yourself lies. If you’re a good storyteller then the lie is more true than reality, and if you’re a bad one, the truth is worse than a half lie.”

“The idea that America exists in a culture of violence is bullshit. What America exists in is a culture of Kardashian.”

“There's always two ways of looking at things... that seeing what's positive about a situation is a lot more fun and gets you a lot further than looking for what might be wrong with it.”

“A writer does not own words any more than a painter owns colors. So lets dispense with this originality fetish… Look, listen and transcribe and forget about being original.”