“The story of America is necessarily one of progress because if it’s not than it’s a stale story where we have not risen above Klansmen.”

I love the bullshit morning shows. They’re so stupid but I love them.

American films are the best films. This is a fact. Cinema is – along with Jazz – the great American art form. And cinema in a very real sense created the American identity that has been exported around the world.

British films are all “room with a view and a staircase and a pond.”

Nationality was – and is – far less a divide than age… because “everything is global, man!”

We’re a leader sure, but still a member of the global community. And that’s true and important and when America acts like its worst self on the global stage is when we forget that.

Blue jeans and Hollywood and rock & roll won the cold war.

Nietzsche said that everyone tells themselves the story of their life. That’s true about countries, too. We’re constantly telling ourselves the American story.

With hip-hop music, it allowed me to talk about political and social things but also to tell stories.

Don’t ask your readers to admire your words when you want them to believe your story.

We are increasingly offered a diet [by Hollywood] in which sensation, not story, is king.

I’ll take any story if it’s good.

A picture story just doesn’t run like a film. It doesn’t have 24 frames per second. It doesn’t deal with this illusion of movement.

I think I’m more bonded, emotionally and in a craft sense, to films that tell extraordinary stories about extraordinary destinies.

Every moral has a story, every story has and end. Every battle has its glory, and its consequence.

I write nonfiction in this thriller-esque style. I have all the facts; I research it. I have thousands of pages of court documents… I try to get inside my stories.