I've kept a diary since I was 11.
I'm not a journalist. So I didn't down and let Assad charm me. I didn't walk away and say "my god he's got an Apple computer and he really likes Beyonce so he must be a liberal. "
The great presidents never forget the principle of the republic and seek to preserve and enhance them – in the long run– without undermining the needs of the moment. Bad presidents simply do what is expedient, heedless of principles. But the worst presidents are those who adhere to the principles regardless of what the fortunes of the moment demand.
The kind of president we need has little to do with ideology and more to do with a willingness to wield power to moral ends.
When I went to war, I did not go making geopolitical calculations. I went to war with a lust.
When you're young and going to war, it's a genuinely exciting moment. You are going to risk yourself. On the battlefield, you are suddenly free. You realize: I'm here, I'm in it. Exaltation. Suddenly you're hit by another extraordinary feeling: my God, I can be killed. And: will I embarrass myself? It's like you're in a kaleidoscope and all of these extraordinary feelings are zipping by.
I cannot understand how something as ubiquitous as war can simply be dismissed as pathological. It is not clear to me that it is an unspeakable evil. If it is, I need proof of it.
And I laugh at myself when I screw things up, which happens all the time.
Everything in Los Angeles is too large, too loud and usually banal in concept… The plastic asshole of the world.
Liberty? Independence? Are they to remain only words? Gentlemen, let us make them fighting words!
I've been able to make some wonderful films, but sometimes you make films with great passion - great belief - and these films slightly don't work at the box office, and they become your favorite films.