We give you characters we'd feel very comfortable judging, and then go: 'Oh yeah? Watch this'.

Walk through Santa Monica and try to find somebody who knows a young man or woman who's in this war. Here, war is an intellectual concept. If you lose your son or daughter, it's no longer an intellectual matter.

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.

The stereotypes we pretend that we reject are ingrained in our DNA.

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

Always write from your gut, no matter what the project is.

I like taking genres and subverting them. I did that with In the Valley of Elah. I said, "Okay, this is just a murder mystery. Relax." And then, two thirds of the way through, I broke every convention of a murder mystery.