It's really about, oh come on, this guy wouldn't say that or he wouldn't do that, you know, it's about the characters, about the story, about the situation.

Somebody once said, you have to wait 20 years before you can tell if a movie's any good or not so that's probably true.

I never do, I don't even go to the retrospectives.

Well, we're in show business, and I have been making a living in this business a long time and inevitably it means taking what it is that you've done and hopefully you're showing it to a lot of people who like it.

I guess I never had a better experience than working on The Long Riders, and at the same time, I never had a harder time than what I did making Southern Comfort.

I've always wanted to do a boxing movie.

If I could go back I might change Geronimo a bit. If I do, it will be made a longer version.

I tend not to look back. It's confusing.

You as an audience can look at these things as films, but I remember them as social experiences.

It's really about, oh come on, this guy wouldn't say that or he wouldn't do that, you know, it's about the characters, about the story, about the situation.

Well, I'm about to do another western, a pilot for HBO this fall.

I mean no film is beyond criticism, but I think we've made a very modest movie.

Get Miramax to send me down to Australia. I'd like to see it.

I did have an offer to direct one of the Alien movies but I wasn't too excited about all the effects work.

I get a great high from writing.

I think it's fair to say I've always been a boxing fan.

I'll talk about these things, but it's just, you know, you only get so much time and I'm much more interested in what I'm going to be doing next year than in something I did 10 years ago.

I always say the next one is my favorite.

Some say Hollywood movies that are made about boxing are just metaphors for other things, I think I've made one that's actually about boxing and not a metaphor.

Naturally we need black men to give this movie serious credibility.

I don't much like looking back.

I wouldn't not want to be a director and write as I wouldn't not to want to be a writer and direct movies.

Kicks are my forte. I've got strong legs and high kicks. And I've got very good reach, obviously.

If someone wants a picture, I'm so honored and so flattered, and I hope I have a reputation as someone who goes out of his way to do those kinds of things.

I read a lot of F. Scott Fitzgerald. I love 'Tender is the Night,' and its atmosphere of doomed romance. He was one of the greatest prose stylists, with a wonderfully clear but lyrical quality.

The two things that I require for anyone who's around me: you need to love food, and you need to be able to laugh.

It's easy to not feel misplaced if this tidal wave of appreciation is coming your way.

All the money my mom spent on lessons paid off.

I have no regrets because I did everything by the book.

The intelligent are to the intelligentsia what a gentleman is to a gent.

I might have a great game hitting, but if I'm not having a great game fielding, if I feel like I let a guy get an extra base that I could have stopped, that's something I've got to do better, got to get better at.

Don't waste your time, it is too short, Valuable and irreplaceable.

The poem, for me, is simply the first sound realized in the modality of being.

As for my career, I always said to my kids, 'you don't cry because it's over, you're happy because it happened.'

I have raised beds, perennial beds, cut flower beds. I have an island on a pond that's just covered in peonies. I have an herb garden, tons of vegetables, raspberries. I have everything. I'm a green guy.

Even the draft dodgers are not pursued and hounded. They are here on our streets, most of them... unless they are breaking Canadian laws .. are getting American dollars from Ma and Pa at home to spend here.

Even as a kid, I wore J.C. Penney plain-pocket jeans because they were plain pockets. I didn't want anybody's name on my backside. I personally don't like to wear clothing that is named for somebody or has someone's likeness all over it.

I am stopped in the street by kids and Harry Potter fans all the time.

My mother thinks I could have even run a larger company.

I truly cannot imagine men with men, women with women, doing what they were not physically created to do, without abnormal stress and misbehavior.

Most of us don't have to worry about being shot if we poke our noses outside. So we are comfortable, but the people I'm writing about are definitely not comfortable, and being shot while they're still inside is a good possibility.

It means a great deal to those who are oppressed to know that they are not alone. And never let anyone tell you that what you are doing is insignificant.

My daddy was a minister, my grandfather was a voodoo priest, my uncle was a mason; I was raised with a lot of studies.

I really think about the times that I've been through with my husband and all the stuff that we've been through together, and I think to those moments for inspiration for the role.

Making resolutions is a cleansing ritual of self-assessment and repentance that demands personal honesty and, ultimately, reinforces humility. Breaking them is part of the cycle.

A director shouldn't get in the way of the movie, the story should.