I decided that now is the time to start doing the things that really interest me and I find important. It was in the 10 years of the MacArthur grant that I began working on my first book... and I began putting more work into environmental history.

I'm a good son a good father a good husband - I've been married to the same woman for 30 years. I'm a good friend. I finished college I have my education I donate money anonymously. So when people criticize the kind of characters that I play on screen I go 'You know that's part of history.'

Education was the most important value in our home when I was growing up. People don't always realize that my parents shared a sense of intellectual curiosity and a love of reading and of history.

There is not to be found in all history any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men of such unquestioned good sense education and learning as to secure us against all delusion in themselves.

Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.

I'm not convinced that women have the education or the sense of their own history enough or that they understand the cruelty of which men are capable and the delight that many men will take in seeing you choose to chain yourself - then they get to say 'See you did it yourself.'

Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.

History is a race between education and catastrophe.

Anyone who knows history particularly the history of Europe will I think recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.

We are people with all the hopes dreams passions and faults of everyone else. Eighty percent of us are born into families with no history of dwarfism.

I enjoy making solo albums because over the years it's evolved into more of a genuine personal expression of story-telling and day dreams and I work in a way that has more control.

I've never dreamed of a story idea. I have such boring dreams.

I believe history will come to view 9/11 as an event on par with November 22 1963 the date on which John F. Kennedy was murdered cutting short a presidency that was growing ever more promising. Dreams died that day in Dallas it is easy to imagine the 1960s turning out rather differently had President Kennedy lived.

We're special because dreams that are impossible anywhere else come true here. That's not just my story. That's your story. That's our story.

What is life? A madness. What is life? An illusion a shadow a story. And the greatest good is little enough for all life is a dream and dreams themselves are only dreams.

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.

I almost fainted. There was no family history. I had been eating a vegetarian diet and I exercised.

I think violence cynicism brutality and fashion are the staples of our diet. I think in the grand history of story-telling going back to people sitting around fires the dark side of human nature has always been very important. Movies are part of that tradition.

In any case his judgment and set of values acting alone or through his assistants determine not only what is gold and what is dross but the design of the history which he creates out of the metal. The historian decides what is significant and what is not.

I love graphic design. I love working with design and I love storytelling so I've been working on a children's book for a while and I'd like to see that through.

One of the best animated films I've seen come out of Disney was the Tarzan movie. I wasn't crazy about the story or the design on Tarzan's face but the traditional animation was spectacular.

The reward is that you can actually create a world separate from reality with a story actors music and camera design. When it works it can entertain move people and teach us all.

I was a cartoonist when I was at university but I decided to go into movie making knowing that I could still draw by doing movies design work story boards and such.

The computer can't tell you the emotional story. It can give you the exact mathematical design but what's missing is the eyebrows.