I don't think I can remember a moment in my life where people didn't discuss politics. People discuss politics at the table.

You love your child and you want to protect your child more than anything on this planet, and yet by the time they're 17, 18, they're going to step into this world, and that world will not feel the same compunction, necessarily, toward your daughter.

I absolutely refuse the fame part of my business. I refuse even the money side of my business. I try to do as good work as I can do, I try to grow in my art and reach for truth. That's what I want from my art, that's what I aspire to.

As an artist you actually do have to make a choice to be an outsider. If you're an outsider you have the freedom to say what people on the inside don't dare to say.

I will always find something that I want to try and become better at. I always love to spend more time with my friends, more time with my family, my extended family. I always want to read more books.

If you asked somebody, 'what do you wish for in life?' they wouldn't say 'happiness.' I would have answered 'excitement, knowledge,' God knows - I mean, many, many different things, but certainly not 'happiness'. It seemed like a foreign concept to wish for something that specific and that singular.

Often when you get a really good script, and you receive the new pages, you see that the entire thing has been dumbed down. Films in the '30s and '40s, that were huge blockbusters, were very sophisticated in their language, and the ideas they brought. There were no questions about whether the audience would get it or not.