“We are Lao people, we can make whatever film we want to make as Lao people. We don't have to make that film that everyone expects us to make.”

Tolly-ho! on The Telegraph, Calcutta http://www.telegraphindia.com/1081128/jsp/entertainment/story_10173848.jsp(2008)

Encountering Directors interview (1969)

Address at Jacksonville University, Jacksonville, Florida (16 December 1971); published in Gerald R. Ford, Selected Speeches (1973) edited by Michael V. Doyle
1970s

From interview with Komal Nahta

Said to Charles Woods, the father of a Navy SEAL killed in Benghazi, as reported in "The Benghazi patsy" http://www.politico.com/story/2013/05/the-benghazi-patsy-091101#ixzz3jrLiuxy0 by Rich Lowry, Politico (9 May 2013)
Attributed

The worst of us is not without innocence, although buried deeply it might be. In my work I try to reach and speak to that innocence, showing it the fun and joy of living; showing it that laughter is healthy; showing it that the human species, although happily ridiculous at times, is still reaching for the stars.
As quoted in A Walt Disney World Resort Outing : The Only Vacation Planning Guide Exclusively for Gay and Lesbian Travelers (2002) by Dann Hazel and Josh Fippen, p. 211

Darkness, p. 91
Catching the Big Fish (2006)
Context: People have asked me why — if meditation is so great and gives you so much bliss — are my films so dark, and there's so much violence?
There are many, many dark things flowing around in this world right now, and most films reflect the world in which we live. They're stories. Stories are always going to have conflict. They're going to have highs and lows, and good and bad.
I fall in love with certain ideas. And I am where I am. Now, if I told you I was enlightened, and this is enlightened filmmaking, that would be another story. But I'm just a guy from Missoula, Montana, doing my thing, going down the road like everybody else.
We all reflect the world we live in. Even if you make a period film, it will reflect your times. You can see the way period films differ, depending on when they were made. It's a sensibility — how they talk, certain themes — and those things change as the world changes.
And so, even though I'm from Missoula, Montana, which is not the surrealistic capital of the world, you could be anywhere and see a kind of strangeness in how the world is these days, or have a certain way of looking at things.

[Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders Meeting 2021 featuring Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, May 1, 2021, Yahoo Finance, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx-OzwHpM9k] (quote at 4:32:01 of 5:42:25)

"Introduction" of Four Screenplays (1960). <!-- Simon & Schuster -->
Context: When we experience a film, we consciously prime ourselves for illusion. Putting aside will and intellect, we make way for it in our imagination. The sequence of pictures plays directly on our feelings. Music works in the same fashion; I would say that there is no art form that has so much in common with film as music. Both affect our emotions directly, not via the intellect. And film is mainly rhythm; it is inhalation and exhalation in continuous sequence. Ever since childhood, music has been my great source of recreation and stimulation, and I often experience a film or play musically.