I always remind people why The Oscars got started in 1928: It was an effort by the studios to suppress the unions. They started the Academy because all the screenwriters and directors and actors were unionizing, and they thought, "We'll have something that resembles a union, but that's completely controlled by the moneyed interests in Hollywood." That's what it's been all these years. It's something that reinforces Hollywood's image of itself. The Best Picture one year was Gandhi. Nobody watched Gandhi, but that's the kind of picture that always wins.

Faith is like a kernel of wheat.

There is no post-9/11. Everything from now until the end of time is post-9/11.

Discourse is fleeting, but junk mail is forever.

The best ally you can have in breaking up a street fight is a grandmother.

If you hate what you're seeing, you call it sex and violence. If you like it, you call it "romance and adventure."

Everything changed in Bosnia, when General Wesley Clark proved that you could fight a war with high- level precision air strikes and a bare minimum of ground action.