Joshua Oppenheimer Quotes

Writing is an incessant process of discovery.

As an artist, you keep learning. You draw out different parts of you.

I think it's natural for an artist to explore as they evolve.

Making a movie is so hard, you'd better make movies about something you really know about. And even more, it's really good to make movies about things you need to figure out for yourself, so you're driven the whole way through. It's going to make things more crucial for you.

Great storytellers in the past would go to an unknown land and return to tell the stories they've found. Those were also journeys into their inner psyches and that's still true today. An actor, a writer, does that as if saying, 'Here's what I've discovered about myself and about the world I'm in. I would like to share this with you.'

Every time I make a film, I feel it gives me the chance to learn something new.

Live life before making movies, because you cannot make films about life, without having lived one.

I'm still learning every night, with every opportunity to write something, to sing something, to perform any work. Every opportunity to do these things brings me further along the journey, and the best part is, no matter how far along I go, I have so much more to learn.

I would say that 'After the Storm' is much more informed by my personal life than my other movies.

As an artist, one of the ingredients to doing good work is self-awareness, and that's something I cultivate.

Writing is a subtle art that is reached mostly by self-discovery and experimentation.

Filmmaking is exploring. Why would I want to make a film about something I already understand?

I began observing, making paintings of my surroundings, taking a vow of silence, listening, composing music, writing, and making time for formal education. Then I started telling stories.

One of the most important reasons for living is to do something - live outside of yourself and put together an idea, an idea that you want to explore and then complete... Awaken your creative sensitivities!

The more I see and know about life, the more ideas I have and the more I want to make art.

In a sense, I think a movie is really a little like a question and when you make it, that's when you get the answer.

The stage sharpened my creative instrument and encouraged me to go deeper and try new things.

I think mostly it's the adventure that I will have in making the movie. That's what I look for.

I think that one's art is a growth inside one. I do not think one can explain growth. It is silent and subtle. One does not keep digging up a plant to see how it grows.

You don't make a movie, the movie makes you.

From the very beginning, I've always just wanted to do something I've never done before. I'm still just trying to be on that path. It's all about working with filmmakers that you believe in.

I'll continue making films because I love being able to drop into other people's worlds. My goal is to be constantly learning.

With 'Brick,' I wrote the script when I was 23 and didn't make the movie until I was 30.

When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands.

My songs are always four years ahead of me. They're like my teachers.