147 Quotes by Errol Morris

I’ve always wondered where explanations end and excuses begin.

People like nonfiction presented to them in a certain way, so that they don’t have to think about whether it’s true or not. They like it to have that imprimatur of respectability, of genuineness.

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.

When you start talking about the known knowns and the unknown unknowns, you’re thrown into a crazy meta-level discussion. Do I know what I know, do I know what I don’t know, do I know what I don’t know I don’t know. It becomes a strange, Lewis Carroll – like nursery rhyme.

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.

I’m really interested in self-deception. Really interested in how people live in bubble universes. How people can fail to see the seemingly obvious.

I used to say that interviewing others was perhaps the way I could stop talking and start listening. It’s a kind of enforced silence.

Listening to what people were saying wasn’t even important. But it was important to look as if you were listening to what people were saying. Actually, listening to what people are saying, to me, interferes with looking as if you were listening to what people are saying.

I actually like doing commercials. I don’t like doing them to the exclusion of everything else, but I like doing them. The 30-second format is very hard. I sometimes call it American Haiku. And I think some of the commercials I’ve done are not so bad.