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.

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.

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 mean, movies are like your kids or your fingers and toes or something, it's pretty hard to pick favorites.

Burt Lancaster was largely responsible for me becoming a director.

Most human beings who are accustomed to attempting to see the world from various points of view tend to be more liberal than conservative. 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. It's a way for me to understand what it's like to be a murderer, to confess, to be a beaten wife, to be a minority, to be a victor, to get the girl, to lose the girl. I can do all of that through the practice of an art form.

And I taught acting for years, and without knowing it that was the real thing that started bending me toward directing.