You don't make a film because the audience is ready for it. You make a film because you have questions that are in your gut.

You hear this story that we're all on the left, but when there's a demonstration, you count how many actors actually come out. If there's a half dozen, that would be a big day.

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.

I really wanted to make a nonpolitical political film. I wanted something that folks in red states and blue states could look at and not ask if this is the right thing to do to be in this war, but what this war is doing to the fabric of our society.

What I love about writing is the contradictions we all embody as human beings.

As a general rule, I don't plan to travel with my Oscars, but we may have to make an exception.

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