You have to try to dismiss the loudness of cynicism. It's certainly going to come.

I work for the public, for the people who are paying to go to the cinema, rather than for the critics.

I think it's hard for people to suspend the era they live in and understand the decisions that had to be made often during the western frontier era were life and death. You had to be resourceful and on your feet to try to figure out somebody. You didn't have the benefit of knowing who somebody was.

You have to decide if you're going to wilt like a daisy or if you're just going to go forward and live the life that you've been granted.

I've always felt that failure was a completely underrated experience.

I wanted very much to do Traffic and at one point it looked like I was going to work on it. And then, of course, Catherine Zeta-Jones had her relationship with Michael Douglas and it suddenly didn't happen.

The movies helped define how I should be as a person.