Pat Nixon was called the Mona Lisa of American politics. She never wrote anything. Her interviews tell us nothing.

I believe in intermissions. I lived through this experience with JFK and Nixon. JFK should have had an intermission. It should have come right after the Donald Sutherland scene, because then there's just too much information flooding in. You need a break. Same on Nixon. It was a long film, but I couldn't help it, with that kind of subject.

What Chavez has done [in Venezuela] is that he has brought extreme poverty to an end.

Football is mesmerizing, because it's a figurative war. You go in one direction till you get there, but you get there as a team, not as an individual. Players bond whether they're black or white, much as soldiers do.

People should really horde their Blu-rays like old comic books and baseball cards. Because they're really beautiful, and will be worth something if you like movies as I do.

Anyone can relate to suffering in this world.

When I go to the movies, and I have to sit through ten previews of films that look [alike] and tell the whole story, you know that we've reached an age of consensus. And consensus is the worst thing for us. We all agree to agree. That's where we lose it as a culture. We have to move away from that.