«Normally as a director, you do look at other films and things that are relevant. But with this film, it became impossible because I became so aware of the camera placement.»

«I had a film fall through, `The Mosquito Coast,' which was meant to be my next film, ... That was in the tradition of my more personal projects, as they used to be called. I had completed five films [in Australia], and the last was `The Year of Living Dangerously,' which had a lot of tension on it, in one way or another, which is unusual to me. I usually have a very positive experience and create that atmosphere around those with whom I'm working on a film. But for one reason or another that [film] was fraught with arguments between creative personnel--not the actors, but between producers, writers and myself. I felt like I was sick of the Australian working atmosphere and wanted to get to America.»

«I had been offered a couple of things but had turned them down, ... They weren't my kind of films. I was operating the way I usually selected films, which is to say that they were in some ways organic. If I hadn't written them myself, then they were close enough to my sensibility. Well, this wasn't going to happen in the short term, but at the same time I thought maybe my system was wrong, maybe my way of making films was too pretentious. So I called my agents and said, `Could you just get me a go picture?' You know, one of these green-lit films. Along came three films, and one of them was `Witness.'»

«On one of the surveys for `The Mosquito Coast,' which had stalled, I was in Belize waiting to go across a river, and there was a punt coming toward us, the very punt we would take across the river, ... I thought they were coming back from a fancy dress party, but it was too early in the morning. Then someone told me they were Amish! They got off the punt looking like they were in makeup and wardrobe from an 18th Century production. That was a tremendous hook for me.»

«I was struck by the Amish aspect of the film, ... As my first American film, I could go to a country within a country, and that would seem to me a better landing spot for me, as an English-speaking foreign director. I don't think I would have done it if, instead of the Amish community, it had been the Italian community in New York. I would have felt too inhibited and thought that the territory of other filmmakers.»

«Music stops you from thinking.»

«I wondered what would happen to him,»

«It's a brilliant and intriguing idea, and the moment I read the script, I knew it was my next film. I started working on it back in '95,»