Latest Errol Morris Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• I used to work as a private detective years and years ago. And my boss gave me this one very simple piece of advice about trying to figure out who to interview first in any investigation. His recommendation: Always pick the people who were fired. Pick the people who are pissed off.

  Errol Morris

  Simple, People, Boss

  Source: film.avclub.com

• The chance that any given sentence is a lie, rather than a truth, I think, is fairly great. An intentional lie, a self-deception, a misconception - there are lots of categories of untruth, not one grab bag. And hotographs can reveal something to us, and they can also conceal things.

  Errol Morris

  Lying, Thinking, Chance

  Source: film.avclub.com

• We have more information - a glut of information - than ever before, and perhaps less knowledge. That's what's peculiar. And the only way you can deal with it, I suppose, is to make fun of it. I would rather watch Comedy Central for the news than I'd like to watch any other program on television. Maybe that shows you the state of affairs.

  Errol Morris

  Fun, Comedy, Affair

  Source: film.avclub.com

• Right now, we live in bad times in this country, and the fact that there are filmmakers addressing political and social issues is to me a good thing.

  Errol Morris

  Country, Political, Good Things

  Source: film.avclub.com

• The way I go about making a movie... even the ones that are interview-driven, I go into them not knowing what's going to happen, and feeling my way through.

  Errol Morris

  Feelings, My Way

  Source: www.avclub.com

• Interviews, when they are just simply an exercise in hearing what you want to hear, are of no interest. And many, many, if not most interviews have that character. The interviewer who comes in with a list of bullet points they're going to address one after the other. Interviews, properly considered, should be investigative. You should not know what you're going to hear. You should be surprised.

  Errol Morris

  Character, Exercise, Interest

  Source: www.avclub.com

• It was assumed that you can't touch evangelical Christians. "Oh, they're the Republican Right. Stay away from those people. Don't even try to talk to them." Well, what's interesting is that there were evangelical Christians who were voting for Kerry. There were right-to-lifers who were voting for Kerry. And it's interesting to listen to the reasons why. To ignore that segment of the electorate is moronic. Particularly if you don't know who those people are, or what their concerns are.

  Errol Morris

  Christian, People, Interesting

  Source: www.avclub.com

• We imagine what this country is, but quite clearly, this country is a mystery. I mean, one of the reasons I did the election ads is, I thought I could learn something. Like, what the hell is going on? I think anybody - particularly a person of leftist persuasion such as myself - who stops and thinks even for a moment, realizes that something strange is going on and we don't quite get it.

  Errol Morris

  Country, Mean, Thinking

  Source: www.avclub.com

• If someone tells you that George Bush is not the 43rd president of the United States, they might be engaged in wishful thinking, or denial, but if they make that claim, it's either true or false! And you can assess that, regardless of whether there's an omniscient narrator, or an unreliable narrator, or it's shot in vérité, or it's manipulated, it's agitprop, whatever! It makes no difference! It's a style!

  Errol Morris

  Thinking, Style, President

  Source: www.avclub.com

• Tell me what's wrong with this idea: If you're selling to somebody, find someone like that person to sell to them. If you're trying to reach swing voters, if you're trying to reach people on the fence, if you're trying to reach Republicans who are unsure about this candidate... get people who switched! Get people who are registered Republicans. Get people who were George Bush voters who can't bring themselves to do it again. Talk to them, get them to explain what their reasons are, and show them to people. What's wrong with this idea?!

  Errol Morris

  People, Trying, Republican

  Source: www.avclub.com

• You can ask yourself, if a film makes a claim, is the claim true or false? Having said that, a style of presenting material doesn't guarantee truth. There's this crazy idea that somehow you pick a style, and by virtue of picking the style, you've provided something that is more truthful. It's as if you imagine that changing the font on a sentence you write makes it more truthful.

  Errol Morris

  Crazy, Writing, Style

  Source: www.avclub.com

• Truth exists independent of style. It involves all kinds of issues. Properly considered, it's a quest, a pursuit. To say that vérité is more truthful than something that is narrated is just misplaced. Completely wrong. And the fact that people still talk about it as though they're really talking about something... it puzzles me greatly. A moment of reflection about it tells you that it makes no sense!

  Errol Morris

  Independent, Reflection, People

  Source: www.avclub.com

• What's great about documentary genre, 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."

  Errol Morris

  Umbrella, Filmmaking, Diverse

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I actually felt diminished by watching [Donald Trump's]. If this is what discourse has become in America, who even wants to know about it? It's just too demoralizing and unsettling.

  Errol Morris

  America, Want, Trump

  Source: collider.com

• The smarter people I know declined to watch the most recent debate [with Donald Trump].

  Errol Morris

  People, Watches, Debate

  Source: collider.com

• You know, anything more negative, anything more disparaging, anything more adversarial than what [Donald Trump] does already. The mystery is how he's gotten as far as he's gotten.

  Errol Morris

  Negative, Doe, Mystery

  Source: collider.com

• I've been involved in doing advertising for various elections and I just couldn't see doing anti-Trump advertising in this election. My line has been, "How could you do anything worse that what he does himself?".

  Errol Morris

  Doe, Lines, Election

  Source: collider.com

• I asked [Donald Trump] if he had any advice for Charles Foster Kane and he said, "Yeah, get yourself a different woman."

  Errol Morris

  Advice, Different, Yeah

  Source: collider.com

• What's interesting is that Citizen Kane was meant as an anti-fascist/anti-capitalist melodrama and for Donald Trump it becomes just another kind of misogynistic claim that misses the point.

  Errol Morris

  Interesting, Missing, Citizens

  Source: collider.com

• In the case of The Thin Blue Line, I was surprised actually by many things. I was shooting down in Texas where the actual killer David Harris lived and I interviewed the town cop. He described these guys as being David Harris' partners in crime and even though they had criminal records and had committed crimes, they sued me! More often than not, the insurance company that protects you against this type of lawsuit will settle it with cash and contest it in a court of law.

  Errol Morris

  Blue, Law, Texas

  Source: collider.com

• I actually wanted to publish [ interview with Donald Trump about Citizen Kane] in the New York Times, but the circumstances under which I did that movie made me vulnerable to a lawsuit and at this point in my career, I don't want to go there. But it's amazing.

  Errol Morris

  New York, Careers, Citizens

  Source: collider.com

• Not suing others does not mean that others won't sue you.If people are desperate enough to think that they can gain some kind of financial advantage, they'll sue.

  Errol Morris

  Mean, Thinking, People

  Source: collider.com

• We live in a very litigious society. I've never sued anybody. I certainly can imagine a situation where I might sue, but it seems more or less in bad taste.

  Errol Morris

  Might, Taste, Imagine

  Source: collider.com

• Long, long before I became a filmmaker I was talking to killers. Filmmaking was an after thought.

  Errol Morris

  Talking, Long, Killers

  Source: collider.com

• Maybe [killers] is one of my real passions. Why deny it?

  Errol Morris

  Real, Passion, Killers

  Source: collider.com