It's only in innocence you find any kind of magic, any kind of courage.

Well, the kind of central question: "Do you want to live - and I don't mean stay alive - do you want to feel your life while you're living it?" You know, there's somewhere to go that was here before we were and is going to be here after us, so get out there in it. It doesn't take somebody who's got some self-important sense of their own attachment to nature to recognise that you're just stupid if you don't go out there.

The thing that's very close in the process is writing and acting, not directing. Directing's very different.

In short form I'll say it was an approach to the family and to [author] Jon Krakauer that then led to me seeming to rise to the top of the heap of several filmmakers that were trying to get the rights. And by top of the heap I mean in terms of being somebody that was trusted to do it as they said they were going to attempt to do it and that this way of doing it would be something they would be willing to allow.

Haiti, like any place, has its security problems; it has a great challenge in terms of establishing a kind of globally acceptable rule of law.

On any movie I'm involved with, I say what I think.

Reputations are maintained by the outside world, and they're created by it, too, by and large. And they serve as a hell of a device for privacy, because the more people look for something that's not there, the less chance they have of violating who you are. It's like going out there with a mask on, without having to exercise your upper body to put it on.