In high school, I got smacked and kicked around. Two bloody noses. It was horrible.

I really trust the authenticity of real people and my job is to get them to be themselves in front of the camera. Often what happens is, you'll get a newcomer in front of the camera and they'll freeze up or they imitate actors or other performances that they've admired and so they stop becoming themselves. And so my job as the director is just to always return them to what I first saw in them, which was simply an uncensored human being.

Movies principally require the best of everybody, all at the same time, being the best they can be. Not just like five people being the best they've ever been, and 10 people not being the best they could be. It's like if everybody is either doing their greatest work, or the whole house of cards falls apart.

I can't describe it, what I'm feeling and what I'm thinking. This means something. This is important.

I don't think that anybody in any war thinks of themselves as a hero. The minute anybody presumes that they are heroes, they get their boots taken away from them and buried in the sand.

I love my kids as individuals, not as a herd, and I do have a herd of children: I have seven kids.

I was afraid of small spaces and I was afraid of the tree outside my window, and I had all these phobias. I think many kids have those phobias, but I probably had more than most.