A Quote by Lawrence Wright

What is interesting to me about film, and documentary film in particular, is that I can write about these people, and you trust my judgment, more or less, but when you're confronted yourself with humans who are right there on the screen telling you their story, you make a judgment yourself that is conclusive.
I make a film - and once I've made it, everyone comes along and says 'Ah! This is a film that's political, or social', or whatever. But I'm not telling the story that they see. I made a film, told a story, but I wasn't thinking about exactly what it all meant.
One of the fundamental points about religious humility is you say you don't know about the ultimate judgment. It's beyond your judgment. And if you equate God's judgment with your judgment, you have a wrong religion.
For me, as a film goer, I like nothing more than to sit in the cinema, have the lights go down and not know what I'm about to see or unfold on-screen. Every time we go to make a film, we do everything we can to try to systematise things so we're able to make the film in private, so that when it's finished it's up to the audience to make of it what they will.
You're more constrained when you're wealthy. Or when you're making a bigger film and people complain about no budgets; but having a small amount of money to make a film means you're at your absolute freest to express yourself as an artist.
When you make a film it is like asking yourself a question. When it is finished, you know the answer. Ultimately with all of cinema, we are just trying to learn about ourselves. I have always used the opportunity to make a film to learn more about myself, which I am still doing.
Gather knowledge about the craft of writing. Immerse yourself in the art of it. Then write. Write yourself silly. Write yourself mad. Write yourself blind. Trust the excitement that builds within you when the idea is good and the writing is superb. You can do it, but that's the hell of it as well as the exultation of it. You have to do it.
Where the Truth Lies rating has a lot more to do with the political climate in America today than it does with the film. It wouldn't have had this rating five years ago. There's nothing graphic in this film on screen; you can look at it, but you won't be able to see it, it's not there. There's nothing graphic sexually that's not about the story telling.
There's that area, right there, where you can be too hard on yourself or you need to be really hard on yourself - I'm trying to ride that line by telling myself that I can always write better, sing better, what can we do to make the show more interesting? Pretend that you're the guy who's been in the front row for the last five shows; what would make it new for you?
With independent film, simply because they don't have the money to make a big-budget film, they're forced to make a story that's important to them, that they would like to see on film, a personal story that people can relate to, about people, where you can see the love of the characters.
Why wouldn't you write to escape yourself as much as you might write to express yourself? It's far more interesting to write about others.
A film is not a documentary. And what's wonderful about film is that it's a real provocation for people. I never, ever see film as being an absolute version of the truth.
Senator McCain likes to talk about judgment, but really, what does it say about your judgment when you think George Bush has been right more than ninety percent of the time? I don't know about you, but I'm not ready to take a ten percent chance on change.
We're all humans. Any human can tell any human's story. I don't want to have this conversation about black film or white film anymore. I wanna have conversations about film.
I have very little interest in endlessly telling people about my artistic process. It sounds like throwing yourself against a wall and crying. It's not interesting to most people. It's interesting to yourself. But it's your problem, not anyone else's.
Honestly, there are so many things about structuring a story for film and telling a story for film that are really different from doing radio.
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.
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