The animal has no intellectual capacity to justify or to find reasons to exist. An animal just exists because it's the natural thing to do.

I've always been interested in how we survive and how resourceful we are as Americans.

My first reaction every time I delve into an episode of history that I don't know very much about is... my first reaction is anger that my teachers never taught me about it.

I'm certainly hoping that 3D gets to the point where people do not notice it because once they stop noticing it, it just becomes another tool and an aid to help tell a story.

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.

I didn't read reviews earlier in my career, but I read them now as I'm older. I read them all.

Casting sometimes is fate and destiny more than skill and talent, from a director's point of view.