Your intellect may be confused, but your emotions will never lie to you.

I think we have to get beyond the idea that we have to categorize people. We can now have action movies with two stars where one might be African American and one might be Asian American. One of them doesn't have to be white, and the other one doesn't have to be the ethnic sidekick. We're way over that. And I think it's happening in society, too.

It is not enough for a movie to be righteous. It must also be watchable.

Of all the arts, movies are the most powerful aid to empathy, and good ones make us into better people.

When I had been a film critic for ten minutes, I treated Doris Day as a target for cheap shots. I have learned enough to say today that the woman was remarkably gifted.

We feel the same emotions for our ideas as we do for the real world, which is why we can cry while reading a book, or fall in love with movie stars.

Samurai films, like westerns, need not be familiar genre stories. They can expand to contain stories of ethical challenges and human tragedy.