Our system is not only based on rules, but a series of self-restraints that we won't be as barbaric as we could be in competing for power because we know if we're all barbaric as we could be, the whole country and the whole society falls apart.

The more people doubt their own beliefs the more, paradoxically, they are inclined to proselytize in favor of them.

As a director, I like trying to unlock the subtext of the scene and try to put the camera in a place that helps that.

Jeff Sessions has some problematic spots on his history, but he has been a pretty normal, respectable senator, more conservative than a lot of us, but a respectable senator for a long period of time.

Friendship allows you to see your own life but with a second sympathetic self.

We still are America though. We're still a country that is a country of social mobility. We're still a country of immigrants. We're still a country with common ancestors. And reviving the civics of America and the idea that we're going to be united, at least not right now, but in some common future, and talking in that hopeful way that Martin Luther King did, that Abraham Lincoln did, seems to me that's the way.

I think Barack Obama's foreign policy will be regarded more failure than success.