As soon as you think you know Clint Eastwood, you don't know Clint Eastwood.

I just always try to find an interesting story and tell it well. That's a hard enough thing to do, whether it's a piece of fiction or it's a small piece of reality. I just look for good story.

What happens when these young men and women come home so scarred and so wounded? We are ignoring that fact. We're just shoving them under the carpet.

The hope is what America represents to the world and has always represented - the hope for a better life and a better world. We have a duty to protect and support that hope with not just our words, but with our deeds.

I like to write about things about which I have no answers, questions that trouble me. These things trouble me.

We all have these tendencies in us that could go this way or that. I think that's the real key in writing. To look at a character without judgment.

I was trying to talk about where we are right now as a society, and talk about the fear we all live in, and certainly since 9-11, how it's affected us and the world.