Errol Morris: I like to think that I differ from other interviewers in...

I like to point out that people very often confuse the idea that truth is subjective with the fact that truth is perishable.

Errol Morris

facts people ideas

Finding truth involves some kind of activity. As I like to point out, truth isn't handed to you on a platter. It's not something that you get at a cafeteria, where they just put it on your plate. It's a search, a quest, an investigation, a continual process of looking at and looking for evidence, trying to figure out what the evidence means.

Errol Morris

quests trying mean

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. People

Errol Morris

strong mean people

Writing is a form of talking, although writing is such an odd thing in and of itself. People go about it in such different ways.

Errol Morris

writing talking people

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

Errol Morris

interviews stuff people

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.

Errol Morris

deception self people

If you want to trick someone with a photograph, there are lots of easy ways to do it. You don't need Photoshop. You don't need sophisticated digital photo-manipulation. You don't need a computer. All you need to do is change the caption.

Errol Morris

want way needs

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

taken world moving

A lot of the distinctions that we make between drama and documentary are spurious. We're deeply confused about these issues. About the difference between the two, about where documentary ends and drama begins.

Errol Morris

confused drama two

If you asked me what makes the world go round, I would say self-deception. Self-deception allows us to create a consistent narrative for ourselves that we actually believe. I’m not saying that the truth doesn’t matter. It does. But self-deception is how we survive.

Errol Morris

deception self believe

The proper route to an understanding of the world is an examination of our errors about it.

Errol Morris

errors understanding world

The very idea of photography is as Oliver Wendell Holmes said in the 19th century, "it's a mirror with a memory."

Errol Morris

mirrors photography memories

They say seeing is believing, but the opposite is true. Believing is seeing.

Errol Morris

seeing-is-believing opposites believe

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

narrative people thinking

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it without a sense of ironic futility.

Errol Morris

infancy-is history past

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

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

citizens missing interesting

The imprimatur of truthfulness does not guarantee truthfulness. People should know better. But they don't.

Errol Morris

guarantees doe people

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.

Errol Morris

people way thinking

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

Errol Morris

debate watches people

I like to think that I differ from other interviewers in the sense that I hide my agenda more successfully, and I'm more open to hearing stuff that is surprising and unexpected. That I'm actually involved in an investigation, through monologue, at times.