Sam Peckinpah's movies probably say more about him than anybody's body of work says about that person. There are running themes in his films that I find eminently fascinating, disturbing, exhausting, and exhilarating.

I'm sure when 'Midnight Cowboy' came out, it took a couple of minutes to get used to the voice and the look of Dustin Hoffman, or to even recognize that it was Dustin Hoffman.

There was never a day at West Point where I didn't ask myself, 'Where would I put the camera?'

Anything about Iraq is a death sentence at the box office... You can't make movies about an unpopular war while the war is still going on - people don't want to pay to get depressed, though they sometimes will go to movies to get educated.

Former soldiers will almost always gravitate to the anti-war party. This happens for obvious reasons. The men who have been in battle tend not to romanticize it and tend not to take it flippantly.

The truth is that I have never created a president to push a political point of view. I am often looking to create aspirational characters; that's true. But, you know, in the end, it is really up to the actor in front of the presidential seal to decide exactly what kind of president you're going to get.

Whenever you make a movie, when it's done, as a filmmaker, you never sit there and say, 'Boy, I really got that right.' It's, 'Where did I screw up?'

Take a look at Mila Kunis. When you see her performance in 'Forgetting Sarah Marshall,' you see a beauty there, and also a sadness.

I think that most of the young officers I know are leftists and liberals and Democrats. And the reason is this: All of our soldiers, the men that work for us directly, are minorities - blacks or Latinos. And we empathize with them. Our job is to advise them and help them.

The fight to get a shield law barring the government from being able to jail journalists is itself a non-partisan battle.

I loved going to the movies, especially when I was a teenager in the seventies. How couldn't you in what was perhaps the greatest era of auteur cinema?

When you hire Sam Jackson, he'll figure out the character, and he'll figure out the character's look, and he'll provide it to you. With Sam Jackson, you basically yell 'action', you go get a sandwich, and you come back and yell 'cut.'

Opera is a very stimulating place to work, and I believe it offers the most intense theatrical experience possible.

The first time someone stood up in front of the fire and told the story while illustrating it with shadows on the walls of the quarry, that was the birth of theater.

Theater originated with technology. People forget that.

Of course theater will always be associated intimately to literature, but the themes or whatever have to penetrate you by the senses. Theater is a sensuous experience, and that's its main difference from film or any other dramatic art.

My taste comes from when I was 12 years old and saw Genesis or Laurie Anderson or some performance artist who had put paint on himself. I've seen a lot of theater, but that's not what woke up my taste to become a director; nontheatrical things were much more theatrical than the theater I was seeing.

For me, theater will always be very, very much alive, but not necessarily in the theatrical tradition.

I'm not good at doing show business; I'm a theatre person. I don't reveal anything about my life.

I'm not good at entertainment. I don't give myself to all the interviews, game shows, or talk shows.

Vegas is a testing ground for the human soul. What are our values, especially in a time of crisis? Work with Cirque du Soleil, and you learn that quickly. The former socialist street performers who now throw parties by the pool with Brazilian models, oh yes!

In Las Vegas, you confront yourself with your darkest desires, because they're all possible there.

A lot of people hated every moment of my 'Ring.' And a lot of people who had never been to an opera bought subscriptions to the next season.

Theatre is different. We can spend two weeks around a table talking about subtext. In opera, there is a score, and people already know their parts. And they move differently. I find all this liberating.