Michael E. Mann's Quotes

Public discourse has been polluted now for decades by corporate-funded disinformation - not just with climate change but with a host of health, environmental and societal threats. The implications for the planet are grim.

In the draft plan, we're looking at recycling 20 percent of our garbage by 2010.

There is no bird flu in commercial stocks.

We don't invent our natures. They're issued to us along with our lungs, our pancreas and everything else.

Bring down Mike Mann and we can bring down the IPCC, they reckoned. It is a classic technique for the deniers' movement, I have discovered, and I don't mean only those who reject the idea of global warming but those who insist that smoking doesn't cause cancer or that industrial pollution isn't linked to acid rain.

I was interested in variations in temperatures of the oceans over the past millennium. But there are no records of these changes so I had to find proxy measures: coral growth, ice cores and tree rings.

The trouble is that the hockey stick graph become an icon and deniers reckoned if they could smash the icon, the whole concept of global warming would be destroyed with it.

I see the world from the perspective of a 5'8" person, not someone who is 6'4". so naturally, I'm going to choose certain lens heights over and again... Sometimes nature makes choices for you.

I think it's easy for directors to stay fresh more than actors, especially once an actor becomes a star. It's hard for Russell Crowe to walk down a street or take a subway. I can fly coach.

I think the resolution involved in the high-def, Blu-ray image demands we pay attention to every detail to a level we've never seen before. The audiences have to believe everything they're seeing. As viewers, we're all so experienced and so much smarter than we realize. With Blu-ray, there will be less tricking of the eye.

Music is always key to me, whether it's 'Miami Vice' or not 'Miami Vice.' It's dictated by the story, about what Crockett and Tubbs and Isabella and Trudy are doing.

Personally, I find looking at all of the supporting materials and bring it all back to me - the people I worked with, the experience of working on a project - makes it come alive again. So, I try to put those experiences into my commentary for the viewers.

Suffice it to say, every actor works differently. Laurence Olivier would put on his costume and when the wardrobe was right, he was in character. That sounds superficial, but it's true, and look at the results.

There's a tired notion that the photojournalist has to be disengaged to be able to shoot what he shoots, and that's such a cliched idea of what the experience is. Of course they're engaged, and they're not distanced.

There's people who live life authentically and there's people who live a life of fabrication. And it begins with the question of how you're gonna do your time. And these are observations I made about Folsom when I was there with Dustin Hoffman when he was directing 'Straight Time.'

We bring our preparation to the table, and opportunity may present itself, and if you are well prepared, you can seize opportunity and then maybe something good happens, and you call that luck.

What I try to do - I mean 'try,' because you don't get there all the time - is to have impact with content. It's those moments in which you're trying to bring people beyond filmed theater. If I have an ambition, it's that.

When you say that I can go and make a movie, I feel like I'm one of the most fortunate men. I feel myself to be a fortunate man that I found something to do that I really love.

A 65-ft.-wide screen and 500 people reacting to the movie, there is nothing like that experience.

By the time I was 21, I knew what I wanted to do, and that was to direct films.

Digital makes things feel more real, like you could reach out and touch them.

Horses have really distinct personalities, and they're magical in many ways.

I like change. I don't like being in the same room for too long.

I own a horse and ride, but I don't know racing or betting.

I've never made any film that I wouldn't go back and re-edit.

In 'The Insider,' I had violence - lethal, life-taking aggression - all happening psychologically, all with people talking to other people.