Since I was a kid I've had an absolute obsession with particular kinds of American music. Mississippi Delta blues of the Thirties Chicago blues of the Fifties West Coast music of the mid-Sixties - but I'd never really touched on dark Americana.

I'd love it if American kids were listening to Muslim music.

Have you listened to the radio lately? Have you heard the canned frozen and processed product being dished up to the world as American popular music today?

The thing is there have been American movies that are similar to Solaris like Alien had a lot of things that are similar although it's also got the horror element.

In movies there are some things the French do that Americans are increasingly incapable of doing. One is honoring the complexities of youth. It's a quiet difficult undertaking requiring subtlety in a filmmaker and perception and patience from us.

American movies are often very good at mining those great underlying myths that make films robustly travel across class age gender culture.

What I liked about American movies when I was a kid was that they're sort of larger than life and I think I'm still suffering from that reaction.

I don't think people have been able to deal with the fact that African American filmmakers can make movies about life and relationships.

I guess maybe I try to make movies that are closer to real life than are many Hollywood movies. But I still try to stay within a commercial narrative a contemporary American vernacular.

I think as an American society when we're paying too many taxes or dealing with war we don't want to see sad things at the movies.

Movies as evidenced by a chorus of protesting and celebrating Americans influence broader trends.

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.

When we talk about Oscars it's almost as a symbol of excellence and the American public and the worldwide public accept that symbol. So a movie like 'The Artist' that costs $14 million has to go out and compete with movies that cost $140 million. How does David deal with Goliath?

We can now have action movies with two stars where one might be African American and one might be Asian American. One of them doesn't have to be white and the other one doesn't have to be the ethnic sidekick. We're way over that. And I think it's happening in society too.

I was sick and tired of being an English actor who did a lot of American movies because I was cheap and good.

I look at American movies the big muscles and try to apply that to Chinese film-making.

The whole world loves American movies blue jeans jazz and rock and roll. It is probably a better way to get to know our country than by what politicians or airline commercials represent.

Citizen Kane is perhaps the one American talking picture that seems as fresh now as the day it opened. It may seem even fresher.

I get up at an unholy hour in the morning my work day is completed by the time the sun rises. I have a slightly bad back which has made an enormous contribution to American literature.

Congressman Berg will repeatedly talk about Harry Reid and Barack Obama and I find it interesting because this morning when I woke up and brushed my teeth I looked in the mirror and I did not see a tall African-American skinny man. So let's make it clear that my priorities are North Dakota priorities.

This morning in the Washington Post there was a statistic about how 85% of Americans are Christians.

Probably millions of Americans got up this morning with a cup of coffee a cigarette and a donut. No wonder they are sick and fouled up.

I blend my green drink every morning. I also fix my son a full-on American breakfast with bacon and toast.

And this President wakes up every morning looks out across America and is proud to announce 'It could be worse.' It could be worse? Is that what it means to be an American? It could be worse? Of course not. What defines us as Americans is our unwavering conviction that we know it must be better.