In other words, I’m against cheating, greed, cruelty, racism, imperialism, religious fundamentalism, treason, and the seemingly limitless capacity for hypocrisy shown by Bush and his administration.

I'm sort of contrary and stubborn sometimes. When everybody says, 'You have to read this book! You have to read this book!' I'm like 'Oh, I'll get around to it.'

Be kind. It's worthwhile to make an effort to learn about other people and figure out what you might have in common with them. If you allow yourself to be somewhat curious - and if you get into the habit of doing that - it's the first step to being open minded and realizing that your points of view aren't totally opposite.

I'm not a great fan of monarchy in general, but I have to say the Danish monarchy is closer to the people; it's not as stuffy as the English one.

I'm certainly curious about people. As a kid, I moved around a lot. I was raised in a lot of different places, and thanks to working in the movies, I've gotten to keep traveling. I've always been interested in other cultures and languages.

As [John] Tolkien himself said, the story [Lord of the Ring ] is not allegorical. He said so when people tried to make analogies to World War II and the fight against Hitler and his fascist coalition.

I think we're on the wrong path in this country and have been for a while. People are in their camps divided by region, economic situation, race, religion, ideology. And there's a lot of just staying in your camp using technology to bolster your case without actually debating with other people, without discussing.