I love storytelling, you know, beyond anything. I love a great story beyond a great performance. Storytelling is about what we all do together and how we collaborate together. A performance can be a collaboration in ways, but oftentimes it's one individual thing.

I had not spent a ton of time around animals as a kid.

I want, overall, to trust what I know is right. There have been many times when I haven't.

'Brokeback Mountain' takes all your conceptions of America, and the Western, and cowboys, and sexuality, and love, and it stirs them all up.

Not to say that you should be constantly trying to change the world, but I think it's important to know that whatever we do has an implication and has an effect, and because of that it is political.

Being a star doesn't last. That's not what life should be about. It's a complete illusion that really has nothing to do with you. For me, finding out about life is the most important thing.

I'm a very political person, and I make political choices in my movies.