I know why we can't have a frank discussion with our policymakers - if you're in the government or in law enforcement you cannot acknowledge that drugs are anything but inherently evil and morally wrong.

Traffic is about drugs. As detailed a portrait as I can muster about what is happening in the drug world, from top to bottom, from policy to how things move on the street.

But my sense in talking to people when I travel is that the film business is not that dissimilar from a lot of other businesses.

I think I'm good at amplifying an actor's strengths, and minimizing their weaknesses. And they all have strengths and weaknesses.

To me the director's job is to leave it in better shape than you found it, literally.

I like to make all kinds of movies. I'd do 'Ocean's Thirteen' with the right script.

Another thing that really excites me: I'd like to do multiple versions of the same film.

I love caper films.

Reality shows are all the rage on TV at the moment, but that's not reality, it's just another aesthetic form of fiction.

The key is, if you're not monkeying around with the script, then everything usually goes pretty well.

I'm in the process of working out an arrangement to make some very, very, very small films in the midst of all these films and maybe that will help. But you get tired of talking. You just want to do it.

Maybe I'll paint, do photography, just something else. I can see that.

I'm sure some people will say, 'Why do this?' And my response is, 'Why wouldn't you?' The film business in general is using a model that is outdated and, worse than that, inefficient.

Well, it's 15 years since Sex, Lies And Videotape, and if you hang around long enough you're having the same arguments with just a new set of people every few years and it gets boring.

I look at other filmmakers and see skills in them that I wish I had but I know that I don't. I feel like I have to work really hard to keep myself afloat, doing what I do. But I find it pleasurable.

I guess why the Ocean's films are hard for me is because on the one hand you have to make sure the performances are there, but on the other hand it's a film that demands, to my mind, a very layered and complex visual scheme. That takes a lot of time to figure out.

A movie that costs only $1.6 million doesn't have to be a cultural event to turn a profit.

The ought to be a worldwide cultural taskforce that just stops you when you have ideas like combining The Red Desert with an armored car heist movie.

I had more fun making Traffic than either of the Ocean's films.

I just produced Criminal, this remake of Nine Queens, and one of the things that appealed to me about Nine Queens is that it was a performance piece, and that's the most fun.

It's pretty clear to me that working as a director for hire agrees with me. I like it. The films that have come out of that, I personally like better than the ones that didn't.

I know why we can't have a frank discussion with our policymakers - if you're in the government or in law enforcement you cannot acknowledge that drugs are anything but inherently evil and morally wrong.

I guess I didn't feel confident enough to be searching in a big public way. I was very content at the time to toil in obscurity on things that I thought might point me in certain directions or teach me certain things - not knowing what that would be.

When things go right it's hard to figure out why, but when things go wrong it's really easy.

I don't consider myself to be particularly gifted in the way that other filmmakers are gifted.

When a film like Chris Nolan's Memento cannot get picked up, to me independent film is over. It's dead.

Making a film that's supposed to be fun to watch is really hard - that's the weird irony of it.

When you're sent something and read it, either you can see it while you read it, or you can't.

I'm very comfortable with failure. I'm very comfortable being the guy who disappoints people.

There are three major social issues that this country is struggling with: education, poverty, and drugs. Two of them we talk about, and one of them we don't.

Warner Bros. has talked about going out with low-cost DVDs simultaneously in China because piracy is so huge there. It will be a while before bigger movies go out in all formats; in five years, everything will.

The great thing about the business is how Darwinian it is. We have to swim or die - if you are found wanting over a period of time, you've either got to change what you're doing or find something else to do.

Lying is like alcoholism. You are always recovering.

In Full Frontal and K Street, I learned to take advantage of the mobility that digital provides.

The brief flashbacks are sun kissed summery and optimistic. Its the only place in the movie you will see red yellow orange or any vibrant colors.

Plan Colombia was supposed to reduce Colombia's cultivation and distribution of drugs by 50 percent, but 6 years and $4.7 billion later, the drug control results are meager at best.

While I recognize the great value and importance of prescription drugs and strongly support a continued U.S. focus on pharmaceutical research and development, our nation's seniors cannot be asked to subsidize the drug costs of other wealthy industrialized nations any longer.

I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've always worked for me.

I was 48-years old before anybody talked me into it for medicinal purposes, instead of some of these drugs that they give you that will lead you to heart surgery and things of that nature.

I was a gang leader. Although, it was a gang for defensive purposes. It was not a gang to sell drugs.

Drugs will get you out of your own way, but we lived it, and that's dangerous. It can actually turn around on itself and steal your soul, and that's what happened.

Previously people were treated anonymously particular on a drugs situation which is obviously highly emotive. They have been treated anonymously even after the verdict had been reached.

Drugs are a bet with your mind.

A lot of victims, for example, have become addicted to alcohol and drugs. It seems to me that the church's healing ministry is going to be enhanced through this in much broader strokes. That's good, it's all positive.

Sex and drugs were simply not discussed in our culture at that time.

It was 1967, and the hippie thing was happening. I got into experimenting with drugs while I was in college in Michigan.

And because of these programs like Medicare, Medicare prescription drugs, Social Security, we now have the healthiest and wealthiest group of senior citizens that the world has ever seen. This is a continuing commitment to that.

If you have children, you don't want to have drugs and drinks in the house. It's just not good.

Well, I'm kinda like George Carlin. I think that there ought to be a time where everybody should have all the drugs they want and there'd be nobody in charge, sort of like... now!