As a filmmaker, my approach is to come in not with preconceived notions, but with curiosity, and in that way, whether my subjects are James Carville or Anna Wintour or Dick Cheney, I am always surprised.

I was watching 'The September Issue' in the back of a theater in New York, and I thought, 'I know I really can do this with actors.'

Reality television has borrowed so much from the world of politics, whether it's alliances or voting or the kind of strategizing that's done. Anything like that came from politics well before it came from reality television.

I believe a democracy needs men and women of conviction in its positions of leadership in order for us to succeed. That's the subject of 'A Perfect Candidate,' a film I made 20 years ago about Oliver North and Charles Robb.

Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.

When people talk about the death of the novel, they are speaking of the need for the birth of something different.

I don't think so-called high technology matters in death. I think they had high technology before Noah's Ark. And it got lost because that was the first Ice Age.

Once you accept your own death, all of a sudden you're free to live. You no longer care about your reputation. You no longer care except so far as your life can be used tactically to promote a cause you believe in.