The secret of directing is working with really good people.

We try to make films for people [that are] the films that we'd like to see. They're not easy to get made. They're hard to get made. You have to keep the budget low to get them made. But at the end of the day, I don't really worry about competition, because I don't really think of it that way. I don't feel like I'm in a race with anybody.

America can't beat anyone anymore.

In 2003 I was saying, where are the ties [between Iraq] and al-Qaida? Where are the ties to 9/11? I knew it; where the f**k were these Democrats who said, 'We were misled'? That's the kind of thing that drives me crazy: 'We were misled.' F**k you, you weren't misled. You were afraid of being called unpatriotic.

If you’re in the room, you've grabbed the brass ring. You are all winners.

Things hurt me now. My knees hurt, my back hurts. But your head still thinks it's twenty-three.

The last real movie stars were probably Redford and Newman. And things were different then. There wasn't this amazing amount of magazines and information about them.