I'm optimistic about people and about the planet and about nature. I think it's resilient, like people are.

In December of 2002, the late Richard Corliss, a respected movie critic with a long and illustrious career, wrote an embarrassing letter of support for the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan in the guise of a Time magazine review of Peter Jackson's The Two Towers.

To be an artist, you don't have to compose music or paint or be in the movies or write books. It's just a way of living. It has to do with paying attention, remembering, filtering what you see and answering back, participating in life.

If I can get a day to myself, I won't answer the phone, I'll read or go for a walk. Simple, basic things. People think there's always time to do that but there isn't. Life is short.

Pinochet and Barack Obama both have the same primary goal, and that's to be president and stay president as long as allowed.

I'm not that involved in personal grooming. But I try not to be offensive to people.

You know, Freud accepted his lot very stoically and very well and with a sense of humor. He aged and died gracefully, and there's a lot to be said for that.