My only obligation is to my characters. And they came from where I have been.

I'm basically like, you know, learned pretty quickly the guy who throws the first punch usually wins, so when people gave me a hard time I just punched them.

I just realized that I need to be a director - for two reasons. One, directors were already my heroes at this point. I wanted to; when I wanted to be an actor I wanted to work with this director. Not work with this actor, I wanted to work for this director.

I like it when somebody tells me a story, and I actually really feel that that's becoming like a lost art in American cinema.

I felt no obligation to bow to any 21st Century political correctness. What I did feel an obligation to do was to take the 21stCentury viewers and physically transport them back to the ante bellum South in 1858, in Mississippi, and have them look at America for what it was back then. And I wanted it to be shocking.

I was just this video-store guy and now I was actually making movies and stuff.

If you just love movies enough, you can make a good one.