I think I'm a very American director, but I probably should have been making movies somewhere around 1976. I never left the mainstream of American movies; the American mainstream left me.
America always seemed to me this foreign land that I imagined I could escape to if I needed to get away - and I think that came both from the fact that I was born there and from watching so many American movies when I was a kid.
I think America concedes that true American music has sprung from the Negro.
I think the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, first of all, has got to be put into the context of being an American cultural showcase. It's there to be a museum showcase of all that's great about American music.
I think the overwhelming majority of the American people know that we have got to stand together, that we're going to grow together, that we're going to survive together, and that if we start splintering, we're not going to succeed in a highly competitive international economy.
I think the American people in many cases want to transform our energy system.
I think 'American Pie' is great.
I'm so vain, all I could think was I should have stopped at 'American Pie.'
Ever since the first 'American Pie,' I've always been happy to just have an opportunity, I just didn't think it was going to be with comedies. Now I really like it.
I think Ralph Nader is the biggest liar in American politics when he said it didn't matter who was president.
Everyone says we have our first African American president. Has there ever been a Jewish president? An Italian president? They don't say a damn thing about that. You think we're still fighting the Civil War or something. If you want to mention it in passing, OK. But don't dwell on it.
The statement that I made and that I think I will continue to make is that racism and bigotry isn't just relegated to the Southern region; it permeates the history of our nation. It's not to say that we haven't made progress. Obviously we have with our first African American president, and I never thought that would happen in my lifetime.
I think it's a myth that American public or any other public is so stupid that they need to be constantly pricked.
If anything, I don't have to convince the American public that we have a broken health-care system. I think the majority of Americans since they have to go through that health-care system, already know it.
I think, in the wake of Sept. 11, it's important for the American public to understand that to the extent that there are individuals within the United States who would undertake terrorist attacks, that we are doing something to address that.
I certainly don't think that the heirs of the American Revolution were a particularly noble class.
When I read about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.
I think the O.J. Simpson trial was a revelation about the ongoing patterns of racial difference in American society.
I just think we shouldn't get into counting coaches' records. I've never been for that... but I know that's just American society.
There are contradictory tendencies in American society. There's a huge range of activities that one can engage in that mark it as a quite free society. It's also true to say that the powers that be have so much control over how people think that there are fewer and fewer people who make use of the rights and information available to them.
