You can learn as much about the history from reading about the present as you can vice versa, that is learning about the present through history, which is what I do for a living.

It follows the seasons, beginning each year with the fond expectancy of springtime and ending with the hard facts of autumn.

You don't work on something for six years and be blind to the myriad of other approaches.

I never, ever want to apologize for a film. If it's bad I'll say it's my fault. And that's what I can say so far in all the films that I've done, that if you don't like it, it's entirely my fault.

World War II is smothered in sentimentality and nostalgia. What's interesting about Vietnam is that sentimentality is just not there, so you're given kind of a clean access to it in one way. It's also a war that represents a failure for the United States. Many people came back feeling like they never wanted to talk about it again. And so we developed a national amnesia.

The only art form that Americans have created that's recognized around the world is jazz music born in a community that had the peculiar experience of being unfree in a free land.

Jazz is a very accurate, curiously accurate accompaniment to 20th century America.