Documentary filmmaking ruins you for real life, because you learn to be extremely attentive.

- Frederick Wiseman

Of course there's conscious manipulation! Everything about a movie is manipulation ... If you like it, it's an interpretation. If you don't like it, …

- Frederick Wiseman

You have to edit the material. That assumes that some kind of a mind is operating in relation to the material. Not all minds are the same. Every aspe…

- Frederick Wiseman

I'm interested in ordinary experience, and regardless of the precise definition of ordinary, and I've found that in so-called ordinary experience, th…

- Frederick Wiseman

It is always a problem to know what an image means.

- Frederick Wiseman

In moviemaking, you learn to pay attention to detail, because so much is in the detail. And when you're shooting, you try to be very alert to what's …

- Frederick Wiseman

My job as a film editor is to construct a dramatic narrative because otherwise it's just a chaotic arrangement of sequences.

- Frederick Wiseman

Anybody whose mind is functioning at all can't be content with the way the world works.

- Frederick Wiseman

Making movies is an effort is an attempt to leave a trace of your existence.

- Frederick Wiseman