Sometimes all you need is 20 seconds of insane courage

If we listen to the better angels of our nature, there are creative and good solutions to serious problems.

I'm not Brad Pitt or George Clooney. Those guys walk into a room and the room changes. I think there's something more... not average, but everyman about me.

Part of the American ethos is that you want to leave something better for your kids than you had and I know that my parents felt that way and I know that my grandparents felt that way and everybody worked hard so that their kids had a better chance. I just don't want to be the first generation that doesn't do that.

The only way I can describe it-at the end of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, you know how his heart grows like five times? Everything is full; it's just full all the time.

And you know, we were talking about American identity, and where we've come from and where we are and where we're headed. We knew that we wanted to have a hopeful ending and we wanted it to be pro-community, and a pro-democracy type of movie.

We live in a world, it's very hard for Americans to understand that every 20 seconds a kid dies, a kid under the age of five, right, dies somewhere on the Earth because of lack of access to clean water and sanitation. Every 20 seconds that happens on our planet. It's just very hard for us to relate to.