Maya Deren quotes:

The task of cinema or any other art form is not to translate hidden messages of the unconscious soul into art but to experiment with the effects contemporary technical devices have on nerves, minds, or souls.

I make my pictures for what Hollywood spends on lipstick,

Myth is the facts of the mind made manifest in a fiction of matter.

Use your freedom to experiment with visual ideas.

It is not morbidity which draws crowds to scenes of disaster or unusual joy. It is the desire to participate in a moment when life breaks through to some higher level of intensity so that one's own life might take fire from that sudden spurted flame.

And what more could I possibly ask as an artist than that your most precious visions, however rare, assume sometimes the forms of my images.

Art is actually based on the notion that if you would really celebrate an idea or a principle, you must think, you must plan, you must put yourself completely in the state of devotion, and not simply give the first thing that comes to your head

I am not greedy. I do not seek to possess the major portion of your days. I am content if, on those rare occasions whose truth can be stated only by poetry, you will, perhaps, recall an image, even only the aura of my films.

The way back is always shorter.