Errol Morris Quotations | Page 2

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

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.

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.

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

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.'

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

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.

Language can be used to so many diverse ends. It can be used to clarify and, of course, it can be used to obfuscate, confuse, evade...

When you start talking about the known knowns and the unknown unknowns, you're thrown into a crazy meta-level discussion. Do I know what I know, do I know what I don't know, do I know what I don't know I don't know. It becomes a strange, Lewis Carroll - like nursery rhyme.

Truth and falsity is something that concerns language, it's a property of language.