The purpose of art actually is, in many cases, to make you feel quite uncomfortable. Or at least to go to that place that's already of discomfort inside of you and tap into that.

Capitalism would have never let me be a filmmaker, living in Flint, Michigan with a high school education. I was going to have to make that happen myself.

Today, whether it is a student who holds a sit-in to get the army recruiters off his campus, or the mother of a dead soldier who refuses to leave the front gate of the president's ranch, we continue to be saved by brave people who risk ridicule and rejection but end up turning huge tides of public opinion in the direction of righteousness. We owe them enormous debts of gratitude. It is not easy to stand up for what is right, especially when everyone else is afraid to leave the comfortable path of conformity.

I'm not a big believer in our copyright laws; I find them way too restrictive.

I want us all to face our fears and stop behaving like our goal in life is to merely survive.

I've always been sort of confused by the trajectory my life has taken. I was supposed to be on an assembly line building Buicks.

The entire business world has figured out how to make huge buckets of money without hiring us to work for them.