I feel like Alain Delon, who once said, "It doesn't matter that I'm not a star in America because I'm a huge star in France, I'm a legend in Spain, and I'm a god in Japan.

Death is a part of life, and eventually I assimilated that completely.

What am I hanging around for? But I'm hanging around because it's still fun.

Much as I like getting awards in Oldenburg, Germany and Torino, it's nice to get one in America.

I think that one of the things that is happening in the so-called "clash of civilizations" is that the confidence that was once obvious in the Western Judeo-Christian tradition has been weakened tremendously. There's a feeling that there's a cynical, corporate layer that's really driving it - one that's ready to compromise - and that the real confident energy around the world is coming from Islam, that the believers take their own faith at face value and with great confidence and in far greater numbers.

It's hard to give a dramatic shape to even the most dramatic life. . . . you are forced not just into selectivity, but into alteration, distortion and outright lying about what did and didn't happen.

I've struggled seriously to make movies with very little money, that I write, that I direct, that mean my life to me. The idea that I would offer a part to anyone for any other reason than that he or she was gonna be the best of anyone I could find is so disgusting to me. I don't give my best friends parts unless they deserve them. Ever.