The very reasons sometimes that you make a film are the reasons for its failure.

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.

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.

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.

Reading a novel of a private experience, very, very different, the nature of it is very different.

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

Burt Lancaster was largely responsible for me becoming a director.