Top 71 Quotes & Sayings by Cambodian Authors

Clay is a very interesting and fundamental material: it's earth, it's water, and - with fire - it takes on form and life.

Let me reassure that the Kingdom of Cambodia a country with independence, neutrality, peace, freedom, democracy and human rights as you all have seen, shall be existing with no end.

Time will inevitably uncover dishonesty and lies; history has no place for them.

If you can keep something very personal, like a song, like a color, like a story, deep in your heart, then nobody can destroy that. Nobody can destroy your imagination; nobody can destroy your love.

Cambodia possesses now the rights to look far into the future and everything for making a future construction is waiting for the Cambodian own efforts.

I love archival films very much. I spent thousands of hours watching archive footage. Every time I see it, I see something. Sometimes I think I know this footage, but two years later, I see it again, and I see something new.

Cambodia wanted no part of SEATO. We would look after ourselves as neutrals and Buddhists.

Every time you are getting ready to make a shot in a documentary film, you are asking yourself questions about your cinematographic approach. You are approaching the truth, but the image is never the truth itself.

Every day, do small gestures of generosity! It does not mean go to Cambodia. Do it at home. If you do nothing at home, evil becomes normal.

Cannes or Oscars is not only to bring happiness and recognition - they protect people like me. The world knows who you are. You can work. You can express. You can help other people. It's not only the star system. It's a symbol of freedom.

As children, we did not have toys. We invented characters and animals; we invented stories.

There are gays and lesbians in every country, so there should be no discrimination against them just because of their destiny.

It is only by reflecting on the past that one can create a better future.

Peace, so elusive in the past many decades, now finally prevails all over the country.

For the young generation, when they see that there is a film director from Cambodia to go on to be nominated, for them, a lot can change. I don't know another way to restore our identity if it's not art.

We need creativity. We need more poetry after Auschwitz.

Pain is handed down from one generation to the next.

Art is giving to what you create a soul.

What I like to do with every film is to bring a form, like a cinematographic proposal. If you watch 'S21,' it's a form; 'Duch, Master of the Gates of Hell' is a different proposal.

I have never been political in a partisan sense.

Totalitarians always want to kill culture. But imagine life without football, Faulkner, or Bob Dylan. It's not life.

In all of my films, there is a desire to testify, to interrogate the past.

When we pray to Buddha, we are not praying to a piece of stone, an image of Buddha, but we pray to the soul of Buddha behind the piece of stone. The souls of the people who are dead now are still with us.

With 'The Missing Picture,' we'd shot for a year and a half already when this idea of the clay figurine, the life that comes from the earth, came to me, and I changed everything.

Cambodia is not going to be bought by anyone.

People of my generation did not like very much to tell what we lived through during the Khmer Rouge regime.

When the Khmer Rouge reached Phnom Penh, the first thing they did was to evacuate the population. Then they took over. The point of a revolution is to bring justice to the people, so even if you don't have proof of sabotage, you manufacture it.

Evil has always been here since the world began. Good is what is difficult. It is a work of every day.

'S21' was a film about corporeal memory and how the same gestures repeated many times years earlier can be reawakened.

The Khmer Rouge can't destroy me. I still have my imagination and am capable of making films. I am not locked up.

I'm not someone who has to make a film at any cost. I have to find the right way to make it or not at all.

We want to see all demonstrations stopped.

In this era of digital special effects, I think it's good to work with our hands and our hearts, to use water and clay, to dry it in the air from the sun. This brings you back to the element of life.

Filming, for me, is a way of approaching, little by little - of getting closer and closer to my subject. And that subject itself can transform, or it can remain the same.

When you screen a film like 'The Missing Picture,' it is not like watching TV. Watching TV is very solitary. When you watch cinema, you watch it together, and you talk about it after the screening.

Sometimes if you can tell one personal story with a lot of sincerity, it can become a universal story.

The most beautiful thing in Cambodia isn't the country - it's the Cambodian people.

When I do feature films, I usually have a very strong sense of what I want to do. I have topics and subjects, so I go for it. I even know technically what I want to. But in the case of documentary, the story comes to me.

I am lucky to be a film director. I can create, express. It proves that I am still alive and the Khmer Rouge did not succeed in destroying me.

Art is freedom. If you defend art, you defend freedom.

We have lost the art of sharing and caring.

I think that, as a filmmaker, you're always making the same film, regardless of how many different stories you tell. This is the case for me, whether I'm making documentaries or fiction films.

Yet, our achievements also mask many continuing failings and seem to expose more future dangers.

I wasn't predestined to be a filmmaker; this wasn't an obvious choice to me.

'The Missing Picture' is about my story and my parents. Before this film, I never said 'I' in a film, so it is very personal.

John Foster Dulles had called on me in his capacity as Secretary of State, and he had exhausted every argument to persuade me to place Cambodia under the protection of the South East Asia Treaty Organization.

Evil has always been there; it's always a part of us. Evil is no big surprise. But what about the people who gave freely, who stood up for human dignity? Even in the most extreme and terrible situations, these acts of dignity existed. And for me, that is the banality of good.

'The Missing Picture' came together slowly, after much provocation and by refusing different forms, until I finally found the right form.

I love when you get the feeling of some social reality with a fictional film.

Cambodia is not only a country of war, but also a country of culture. It's in our DNA.

There is no book-learning culture in Cambodia. People do not read. The children do not read in school. Educators must come up with a policy that meets the great need for knowledge: using modern audiovisual methods that the young can connect with.

Of course, when you're making a documentary, you don't have actors, but nonetheless, there is a writing process that does take place in the editing room.

Pol Pot will surrender, be captured or commit suicide.

It's better to live a world where you can hear different languages and sensibilities.

I never want to be a film director - I want to be a teacher.

To me, form is not something that you can plan beforehand, especially for a documentary. You can't write it or sketch it. It requires a confrontation with reality, with history, with ethics and morals. After identifying good content, you have to find the right form to express that content.

We need a peaceful, modern Cambodia. We need to achieve that. It's not easy.

Cinema is not truth. Even when you make documentary films, you can choose to show this shot and not the other shot - this side and not the other side. In cinema, there's one truth - not 'the truth.' It's only 'my point of view.' Cinema is powerful because of that.

The trial organized with U.N. participation of some kind will be for crimes committed by Khmer Rouge leaders from 1975 to 1979. That's it.

I left Cambodia when I was 12 or 13. I didn't really escape, but I needed to go away.