There's a lot of money to be made by strip-mining and drilling the dirtiest oil on the planet. But why should the rest of us pay the price?

I believe in mythology. I guess I share Joseph Campbell's notion that a culture or society without mythology would die, and we're close to that.

I have a lot of land. I bought it because I had a very strong feeling. I was in my early twenties, and I had grown up in Los Angeles and had seen that city slide off into the sea from the city I knew as a little kid. It lost its identity - suddenly there was cement everywhere and the green was gone and the air was bad - and I wanted out.

What I would do is when I was younger I would draw in a sketch book something that happened in my life and then write a little something on the side about what happened or what the story.

As a director, I wouldn't like me as an actor. As an actor, I wouldn't like me as a director.

I think "quiet" sometime is a greater power than noise. It can harbor and reveal feelings that can't be expressed.

Part of me is drawn to the nature of sadness because I think life is sad, and sadness is not something that should be avoided or denied. It's a fact of life, like contradictions are.