Three Days of the Condor is still an interesting film to watch not because it's political. It happens to be political. But that's not why the sales of the DVDs are as high as they are. It's because it's an entertaining thriller. In my opinion, Tootsie is a very political movie but truck drivers can go and laugh at it.

I'm not going to be an interpreter at the U.N. I'm not going to live in Africa on a farm or whatever, but I am going to see the world through those eyes when I make those films.

I have one life. I am a certain age. I'm married to one person. I have a certain number of children. I won't have another life other than that, but I do have many lives through the films.

I didn't grow up thinking of movies as film, or art, but as movies, something to do on a Saturday afternoon.

Editing feels almost like sculpting or a form of continuing the writing process.

I think it's a terrible shame that politics has become show business.

When you spend your life acting and being other people, as opposed to being the one person that you are, you learn that life is gray sometimes, not black and white. That what you thought was true isn't necessarily true if you switch sides.