There's something that's so basically corrupt about any system in which a good and fair profit is not enough. There has to be more, every year, every quarter, because your stock price has to rise.

It turns out that good actors can make anything believable.

We crash into each other just so we can feel something.

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.

If there's magic in boxing, it's the magic of fighting battles beyond endurance, beyond cracked ribs, ruptured kidneys and detached retinas. It's the magic of risking everything for a dream that nobody sees but you.

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.

Independent films are very hard to get made, but I'm lucky enough to get them made, so I'm going to keep doing it. I like my independence. I like being able to tell a story the way I want to tell a story. I don't like developing it with a team. I like coming to a story and deciding whether I want to do it or not.