I was an ambitious child and I tended to be scatterbrained. If I was at school and saw a bird outside the window I wanted to follow it. I was adventurous.

I try to eliminate as much dialogue as possible, and I guess Rambo is my really best experiment with how to eliminate dialogue.

When you're pushed killing is as easy as breathing.

I'm a big believer that, in life, we can't succeed in everything. Most times, we lose.

I thought I had reached a point in life where everything would be smooth. But it is not. It just gets more jagged and pitted and filled with turns that take you into the dark recesses of your mind. It never seems to get easy.

I tend to think of action movies as exuberant morality plays in which good triumphs over evil.

In this day and age, if you're aspiring to be an actor, and you're putting all your eggs in one basket, you could be disappointed. I started out as an actor, but I forced myself to be a writer, even though I wasn't very good at it and had never written. I don't think I ever passed an English course in my life. My first 8 to 10 scripts were pretty horrendous, but I stayed at it until I eventually found a voice and a subject that people were interested in. So, I recommend that you go out and try to be as versatile as possible: writer, actor, producer and especially director.