When I see a story, I ask: is this something I'd like to be in? Is this something I'd like to see? And if I'd like to see it, would I like to tell it?

All I know is there's thousands of people in the Academy and a lot of them, the majority of them, haven't won Oscars.A lot of people are crying, I guess.

Hollywood, as everyone knows, glamorizes physical courage. . . . if I had to define courage myself, I wouldn't say it's about shooting people. I'd say it's the quality that stimulates people, that enables them to move ahead and look beyond themselves.

To me cinema can be a much more friendly world if there's a lot of things to choose from.

It's hard to tell what will stimulate curiosity nowadays because looking at some of the things that do excite people, you kind of go, "Ohh, OK. So this hasn't a chance." But we made it anyway. I think if people see the picture, they'll find a lot of parallels to today, ever since 9/11 and everything, that kind of fear that's going on in disturbance of the country.

With people in high office, the old - you go into the extreme, which is absolute power and absolute power corrupts.

The reason I still work at this stage of life is because I enjoy learning something new each day.