Getting a burp out of your little thing when she needs it is probably the greatest satisfaction I've come across at this point in my life.

In Missouri, where I come from, we don't talk about what we do - we just do it. If we talk about it, it's seen as bragging.

Iliad by Homer is one of the great stories in literature. And I thought its themes really resonated today, whether that was my projection or Homer's intentions. It didn't seem like we had come very far.

[Fatherhood] is everything.... The hardest job in the world, the most rewarding job in the world.... We put in long days. And to go home and have dinner with your kids, and have to discipline one of them who's out of line, and still have the energy for that is.... I can't explain the fulfillment of that, but it is everything.

Billy Beane was a guy who had been devalued by the sport as a player and now is working as a GM for a small-market team.There is such a gulf in what these teams have to spend on talent [that] they can never play equally - they can never have a true competition.

I don't think I was all that late in becoming a father.

I had the luxury of working on the script with Andrew [Dominik] for a good year before the film started, so I was already intimate with the story [of The Assassination of Jesse James] and felt quite prepared walking into it.