When I look around the world and think why is everything working or not working, it's because it's entrenched ideology. You can't solve a problem if you're sitting down with people who say, "All these ideas are off the table because of what I believe."

If you think that because you're Che, when you go into Bolivia, when people find out it's you, that they're going to have the same kind of reaction that the Cubans had to Castro, then you're high.

American movie audiences now just don’t seem to be very interested in any kind of ambiguity or any kind of real complexity of character or narrative - I’m talking in large numbers, there are always some, but enough to make hits out of movies that have those qualities. I think those qualities are now being seen on television and that people who want to see stories that have those kinds of qualities are watching television.

I'm not precious about anything. The effort it took to get something means nothing to me in post. It means nothing to the audience. I'll chop limbs off. I'll put an arm where a leg should be. I'll do anything.

I had more fun making Traffic than either of the Ocean's films.

I grew up mostly in the South, and there's definitely something about the South that's different from the North. When people ask me where I'm from, I say Louisiana. I spent more years there than anywhere else.

There is sadness of when you're watching someone enjoy something that you think is substandard. The ineffable sadness when someone is happy and something is not as good as it should be.