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.

Most of the time, I'm working in places I'm not familiar with. Sometimes it's Slovakia, and sometimes it's Hawaii. Not to bash on Slovakia, but I really did enjoy Hawaii.

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.

The simple truth is that everyone has an opinion, everyone has the right to voice it, and they should if they want to.

I think there are a lot of great journalists out there. I don't find much fault in the journalist in general; I think everybody would like to break a good story.

Directors are the captains of the ship, and it's your job as the lead actor to make sure that the rest of the cast understand that by doing whatever he says.

I have a picture of a rainy Paris street scene which I bought when I was 33 and on my first trip to Paris. I go past it when I go upstairs every night and it reminds me of that trip and makes me happy