Other people had strived for freedom and promise and ratatatata but the Constitution [of USA] was the first time we codified it aspirationally and wrote it down and put it up on a wall and said, "this is us." If your father was a cobbler, and his father was a cobbler, and his father was a cobbler, you don't have to be a cobbler.

Nationality was - and is - far less a divide than age... because "everything is global, man!"

American films are the best films. This is a fact. Cinema is - along with Jazz - the great American art form. And cinema in a very real sense created the American identity that has been exported around the world.

The story of America is necessarily one of progress because if it's not than it's a stale story where we have not risen above Klansmen.

Other people had strived for freedom and promise and ratatatata but the Constitution [of USA] was the first time we codified it aspirationally and wrote it down and put it up on a wall and said, "this is us." If your father was a cobbler, and his father was a cobbler, and his father was a cobbler, you don't have to be a cobbler.

Blue jeans and Hollywood and rock & roll won the cold war.

British films are all "room with a view and a staircase and a pond."