It's the post-literate generation that is most disturbing to a movie-maker. The explosions and the knifings. People like to go to what's hot and you can't get past a certain gross unless you involve children who go more than once.

Staying together is a challenge. We all have to accept qualities in other people that aren't always exactly what we want or need.

It's very easy to go down, so always live up. Incline yourself upward.

I don't even own a cell phone.

There has long been a bemoaning of the lack of opportunity to make films that are anything but explosions or the ladling on the pea soup or whatever you want to call it. You can hardly make a movie today where somebody isn't a murderer or a rapist or, if it's a "Fried Green Tomatoes" that isn't some wistful thing on this, that or the other thing.

I sort of understood that when I first started: that you shouldn't repeat a success. Very often you're going to, and maybe the first time you do, it works. And you love it. But then you're trapped.

If I were an Arab-American, I would insist on being profiled. This is not the time for civil rights. There are larger issues for Americans.