Walking on camera is damn hard. It's a Jewish problem. The rangy stride across the blasted moor is not really a Jewish thing.

Even for the most excitable preacher, there was nothing inherently sinful about a waffle.

Great art has dreadful manners. The greatest paintings grab you in a headlock, rough up your composure, and then proceed in short order to re-arrange your reality.

Charlie Hebdo: Satire was the father of true political freedom, born in the 18th century; the scourge of bigots and tyrants. Sing its praises.

Histories never conclude; they just pause their prose. Their stories are, if they are truthful, untidy affairs, resistant to windings-up and sortings-out. They beat raggedly on into the future.

Irreverence is the lifeblood of freedom.

What can art really do in the face of atrocity?

The irony about Charles II is not that he came to the throne because England needed a successor to Charles I, but because England needed a successor to Oliver Cromwell.

There are some places where history just grabs you by the jugular. This is one of them.

Nations don't start out. There is not a particular moment when they unveil the essence of themselves. They are always a work in progress.

But it struck me that the extreme violence and cruelty of the English Civil War had gone understated.

You may not be given the whole story when you ask for guidance, only the part you are psychologically equipped to handle.

If military movies were automatically successful we'd make nothing but military movies. But seriously, patriotism is one thing that all Americans have in common.

Uncertainty is a sign of humility, and humility is just the ability or the willingness to learn.

Some record labels want to package you in a certain way and we didn't want that. Once the record company saw we had some substance and were not a one hit wonder. They got 100% behind us.

A grain of sand leads to the fall of a mountain when the moment has come for the mountain to fall.

There's so much more to life than what you're feeling now

The four most important words in the English language are, "What do you think?" Listen to your people and learn.

To be a good human being is to have a kind of openness to the world, an ability to trust uncertain things beyond your own control.

High Noon is a pretty corny movie.

The only difference between this and Custer's last stand was that Custer didn't have to look at the tape afterward.