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I think calling someone a character is a compliment.
Errol Morris -
Part of the mystery of any given photograph is the fact that it was taken at a certain time and in a certain place and time keeps moving on. A photograph might be a moment in time preserved, but the world continues to change around it.
Errol Morris
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All alone - shorn of context, without captions - a photograph is neither true nor false.... For truth, properly considered, is about the relationship between language and the world, not about photographs and the world.
Errol Morris -
My stuff always starts with interviews. I start interviewing people, and then slowly but surely, a movie insinuates itself.
Errol Morris -
We falsely interpret the world around us. We ignore evidence that doesn't support our prior beliefs and we convince ourselves we know things we don. We think we know things we don't know.
Errol Morris -
There's this crazy thinking that style guarantees truth. You go out with a hand-held camera, use available light, and somehow the truth emerges.
Errol Morris -
I remember on page one of The New York Times the article about Fred Leuchter. The heading was "Can Capital Punishment Be Humane" and it was the story about an electric chair repairman and execution machine designer. And then buried in the back of the paper was the fact that Fred Leuchter had also been involved in holocaust denial.
Errol Morris -
They say seeing is believing, but the opposite is true. Believing is seeing.
Errol Morris
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I used to work as a private detective years and years ago.
Errol Morris -
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 -
I've never seen myself as a documentary filmmaker. I see myself as a filmmaker, period, and I am interested in drama as well as in documentary.
Errol Morris -
There is a documentary element in my films, a very strong documentary element, but by documentary element, I mean an element that's out of control, that's not controlled by me. And that element is the words, the language that people use, what they say in an interview. They're not written, not rehearsed. It's spontaneous, extemporaneous material.
Errol Morris -
I've had people turn me down. Not all that many, but certainly it happens.
Errol Morris -
Truth is a pursuit, it's a quest. And proof is certainly in the pudding in this particular instance, because the film, and the evidence accumulated in making the film, led to this man's release from prison. And that's hardly ever happened, if it's happened at all, in any other film that I can think of.
Errol Morris
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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 -
I don't believe that you can talk about a photograph being true or false. I don't think such a claim has any meaning.
Errol Morris -
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 -
The pursuit of truth, properly considered, shouldn't stop short of insanity.
Errol Morris -
There is only one direction. (Down.) There is only one color. (Black.) And there is only one number (Zero.)
Errol Morris -
The proper route to an understanding of the world is an examination of our errors about it.
Errol Morris
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People think in narratives - in beginnings, middles and ends. The danger when you edit something too severely is that it no longer makes sense; worse still, it leaves people with the disquieting impression that something is being hidden.
Errol Morris -
It's pretty clear that fame isn't inextricably connected with merit .
Errol Morris -
You can think of my films as cautionary tales, but you might even think of them as despairing tales, because at least in a cautionary tale, you have this idea that by listening to the story you can assure a better outcome. Whereas I'm not at all convinced that's the case. In fact, if anything, I'm convinced that it's the opposite.
Errol Morris -
I've been horribly depressed (lately), which, as you know, can be terribly time-consuming. I mean, if you're going to do it right, that is.
Errol Morris