It's not in our nature. Americans have never been a people that drive through a nice neighborhood and say 'Oh I hate the people who live in these nice houses.'

We are a people that have always celebrated other people's success so long as we always had the opportunity to meet that success ourselves. That is the American nature. That is the American character. That is one of the things that makes us different from the rest of the world. And I'm afraid we could lose that or are on the verge of losing that.

Nature is indifferent to the survival of the human species including Americans.

I know I'm not known as method. By nature I'm not a brooder. What I continue to use is a mixture of the English school which is traditionally outside-in and the more American way of working from the inside out.

America is still mostly xenophobic and racist. That's the nature of America I think.

All the perplexities confusion and distress in America arise not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation not from want of honor or virtue so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin credit and circulation.

My music appeals in America. There is less of the purist criticism I get here. And to be a hit in the U.S... what singer doesn't have that dream?

But recently I began to feel that maybe I wouldn't be able to do what I want to do and need to do with American musicians who are imprisoned behind these bars music's got these bars and measures you know.

It's a really unfair world because life is where I am all day long we listen to American music. So I don't see why the radios in the U.S. cannot even put aside one hour a day just to play music that is not American.

We are living in a time when American popular music is finally being recognized as one of our most successful exports. The demand is huge.

In America life is introverted self-absorbed - and so is their music.

Mumford & Sons' music appeals to a lot of America. I'm really proud of them.

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?

Metal is still the biggest music now in America.

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 America we have so many movies and so much media about the Islamic world the sub-continental world but it's not a conversation it's a monologue. It's always from one point of view. 'If we don't tell our own stories no one will tell them' is my mantra.

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 think America becomes more disgruntled by going to the movies and having an endlessly good time at them.

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.