[When making movies I] set out to be authentic to [myself] and to put it down the way [I] feel it and know it and interpret it. And then others sometimes key into it and get it.

With television, the image has been degenerated, no question. With the internet, commercials... people are much too cynical about image. It's stale. And all over the world, not just America.

Franklin Roosevelt saw the world as a possible alliance, with the UN involved, of course, where we would never have these kinds of wars again. And he was equally opposed to the British Empire as he was against the Communist Russians.

The U.S. ultimately decides what the national security threat is. They put Russia one, Iran two, China three - the terrorists are down the list. But it's amazing to me that we can still consider Russia a threat. On the contrary, they've been very helpful in the Middle East, trying to calm the situation and respect the rights of sovereign countries to exist. It's the U.S. that hasn't - whether in Serbia, the old Yugoslavia, in Africa, and now, Iraq.

I didn't like my classmates at Yale. George W.Bush was in my class. I didn't know it then.

We all have idealism. We think we're healthy and then, all of a sudden, one day, you have cancer. The truth has a mind of its own.

My schooling was very conservative. I went to Trinity School, and then to the Hill School, which is a boarding school, then to Yale. My parents got divorced in that period, and I realized I didn't have a life anymore. I was the only child, so a three-person family breaks apart. I ended up very conformist, very scared, very lonely. I couldn't go on with Yale, just couldn't do it. I'd been doing too much of that for too long. I didn't know what I wanted, but I knew what I didn't want, which was to go to Wall Street and join the crowd there.