With a movie you're creating from the beginning this particular work, let's not call it work of art, because very few movies are works of art, let's just call them bits of popular culture, whatever they are, sometimes very rarely by accident a movie becomes a work of art.

Relationship films are political. If a woman is sitting in a waiting room in an office and a man walks in and sits down, it's a political situation. If he decides to smoke, does he ask her or does he just light up? If he lights up, what does she do? It's politics.

OK, I know this is going to disgust you, Michael, but a lot of people are in this business to make money.

The dance that happens, between actor and director, is a very delicate thing...it's why people tend to work together on many films over and over.

You mustn't regret decisions that you make. Because the decisions are made out of your gut in a way and you have to stick with them.

There's a religious basis to their [Bush and Chaney] kind of conservatism. It's rooted in a kind of fundamentalism. I'm afraid of that. I don't like that idea. I think all extremism is suspect.

I mean, the truth of the matter is, I like the failures as much as I like the successes, it's only the world that doesn't like the failures.