You can't expect the entire world to come to New York to see you. You have to travel to them.

As an artist I have an even more abiding interest in the compact between the Arts and Government.

By showing hunger, deprivation, starvation and brutality, as well as endurance and nobility, documentaries inform, prod our memories, even stir us to action. Such films do battle for our very soul.

I prefer to make common cause with those whose weapons are guitars, banjos, fiddles and words.

I tried for a while to be an agricultural worker and was hopelessly bored. To me it was meaningless. I would stand around in heaps of manure and sings about the beauty of the work I wasn't doing.

I am filled with awe that filmmakers have the capacity to stir us and give us back a sense of wonder.

The play is always fresh to me. It's not the audience's fault that I've said the words before.