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.

One of the things I really like about Ford's films is how there is always a focus on the way characters live, and not just the male heroes.

When you are editing, the final master is Aristotle and his poetics. You might have a terrific episode, but if people are falling out because there are just too many elements in it, you have to begin to get rid of things.

Louis Armstrong is quite simply the most important person in American music. He is to 20th century music (I did not say jazz) what Einstein is to physics.

We're having a hard time understanding where jazz is going. What happened to jazz?

In a sense I've made the same film over and over again. In all of them I've asked, 'Who are we as Americans?

I treat the photograph as a work of great complexity in which you can find drama. Add to that a careful composition of landscapes, live photography, the right music and interviews with people, and it becomes a style.