People ask what are my intentions with my films - my aims. It is a difficult and dangerous question, and I usually give an evasive answer: I try to tell the truth about the human condition, the truth as I see it. This answer seems to satisfy everyone, but it is not quite correct.
I want to explain to everyone that during election season, a politician is always short of time. We are thankful to any politician who takes out time for an interview.
A valuable qualification of a modern politician seems to be a capacity for concealing or explaining away the truth.
I don't 'handle' people. It's so much easier to manipulate actors than to really have an earnest discussion with them. It's very easy to say whatever's going to appease them and then turn around and do whatever you want to do. It's difficult to be forthright with people, because the job does not lend itself to that.
Turgenev was a very serious fellow but he could make me laugh because a truth first encountered can be very funny. When someone else's truth is the same as your truth, and he seems to be saying it just for you, that's great.
Everyone in my family went to college. So I went for a year to appease people, in a way. I didn't really see that being my path, but I did want to be sure, as well, about that. When I was, that's when I left.
Americans - in general, we are very steadfast people: we know what we want; we get what we want.
The issue of racism and racial prejudice. It is very, very difficult to discuss. It is difficult to discuss the issue of apartheid. Many have made the observation that it is very difficult to find anyone in SA who ever supported apartheid because everyone was opposed, it was against our will and so on.
The truth frequently seems unreasonable; the truth frequently is depressing; the truth sometimes seems to be evil, but it has the eternal advantage, it is the truth and what is built thereon neither brings nor yields to confusion.
Words are difficult and photography takes the words away from things. It's difficult to talk about something that seems to come very naturally to you, to explain a process. A moment is really difficult to put on paper.
For politicians truth and falsehood are unimportant. So I never could become a politician - not even a church politician.
It's very difficult to get to the truth and ironically, in the Information Age, which we would have thought meant channels to the truth is in fact obfuscating the truth.
I don't want to help a politician revise the truth.
Truth does not appease but inflames the curiosity.
Truth is what is true, and it's not necessarily factual. Truth and fact are not the same thing. Truth does not contradict or deny facts, but it goes through and beyond facts. This is something that it is very difficult for some people to understand. Truth can be dangerous.
I found that most people don't really want to know the truth. There are plenty of people who want to know the truth on their terms or require that the truth be contained within certain boundaries of comfort. But truth can never be known this way. You have to seek truth from a place of not knowing, and that can be a very threatening place because we think we already know the truth or we are afraid of what the truth might be.