Quotes by Errol Morris

About Errol Morris:

Errol Mark Morris is an American film director. In 2003, his film The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

A lot of stories that have fascinated me are tabloid stories that have come from other newspapers, like 'The New York Times.'

Errol Morris

My stuff always starts with interviews. I start interviewing people, and then slowly but surely, a movie insinuates itself.

Errol Morris

I believe it was probably less than ten minutes that went by from the invention of photography to the point where people realized that they could lie with photographs.

Errol Morris

Films are neither true nor false. That includes my films, as well as others. They may make claims that are true or false, but films are too complex. They have too many ingredients.

Errol Morris

We all know that yellow journalism didn't just happen a week ago or a month ago, that yellow journalism has probably been with us as long as journalism has been with us.

Errol Morris

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 wh...

Errol Morris

There are endless anxieties in putting a film together, and it's an enormous relief when you know it's working with an audience.

Errol Morris

I like to think that I'm nonjudgmental, that I can listen and be engaged by almost anything.

Errol Morris

You know, I actually like doing commercials. I don't like doing them to the exclusion of everything else, but I like doing them.

Errol Morris

I taught my son to read with tabloids. We would sit to read the 'Weekly World News' together.

Errol Morris

Do I like tawdry, sleazy stories? Yeah, I do.

Errol Morris

You're meant to think somehow that literature, in espousing eternal values, is kind of normal and balanced and reasonable. When it fact it's anything but.

Errol Morris

Maybe existence is ultimately a lonely thing.

Errol Morris

What's great about documentary, 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

If we're reading a first-person account, we know that each and every one of us, myself included, have a great desire to be seen in a certain way, or to be perceived in a certain way. It's unavoidable.

Errol Morris

I feel as if I became a documentary film-maker only because I had writer's block for four decades. There's no other good reason.

Errol Morris

Forty years ago this country went down a rabbit hole in Vietnam and millions died. I fear we're going down a rabbit hole once again - and if people can stop and think and reflect on some of the ideas and issues in this movie, perhaps I've done some d...

Errol Morris

When 'The Thin Blue Line' came out, I was criticized by many people for using reenactments, as if I wasn't dedicated to the truth because I filmed these scenes. That always and still seems to be nonsensical.

Errol Morris

If you're a journalist - and I think, on some level, I'm a journalist, and proud to be a journalist, or a documentarian, however you want to describe it - part of what I do has to be the pursuit of the truth.

Errol Morris

When you're working for yourself and your own obsession with finding the truth, you're at your own mercy.

Errol Morris

I don't believe truth is conveyed by style and presentation. I don't think that if it was grainy and full of handheld material, it would be any more truthful.

Errol Morris

Author Bio

  • NameErrol Morris
  • Descriptionfilmmaker, primarily documentaries
  • BornFebruary 5, 1948
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionFilm Director
  • AwardsMacArthur Fellows Program