Second, this epic tale allows the audience to actually listen to the Native Americans and receive their wisdom. Spielberg conveys the respect for Native Americans that is normally lacking in Western films.

Spending two years on my uncle's ranch in Montana as a young man gave me the wisdom and the thrust to do westerns.

The kind of pace that you want to use in a Western - just to acknowledge the land in the distance that everyone has to travel, and the way things develop sort of slowly - it's almost the antithetical of what's currently going on in the movies, you know.

My most memorable meal is every Thanksgiving. I love the food: the turkey and stuffing; the sweet potatoes and rice, which come from my mother's Southern heritage; the mashed potatoes, which come from my wife's Midwestern roots; the Campbell's green-bean casserole; and of course, pumpkin pie.

Now, I know it's a widespread assumption in the West that as countries modernize, they also westernize. This is an illusion. It's an assumption that modernity is a product simply of competition, markets and technology. It is not. It is also shaped equally by history and culture. China is not like the West, and it will not become like the West.

As I've often said, Wisconsin's greatest strength continues to be the dedicated, hardworking people of our state. They go to work everyday, pay their taxes, and raise their kids with good, Midwestern values.

The area of teenage life is not necessarily rarefied; we've all gone through that period. It's not as rarefied as a western or a space adventure or a gangster film, but it has its own dynamic.

The only reality is our society, and I mean this seriously, Western Society is a very sick society.

The great principle of Western society is that competition rules here as it rules in everything else. The best man - that is to say, the strongest and cleverest - is likely to get the best woman, in the sense of the most beautiful person.

The point of mythology or myth is to point to the horizon and to point back to ourselves: This is who we are; this is where we came from; and this is where we're going. And a lot of Western society over the last hundred years - the last 50 years really - has lost that. We have become rather aimless and wandering.

Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.

As a child, I was subjected to a lot of spaghetti Westerns and hated them. I wanted the Indians to win - or just not be so sad!

I still want to do a romantic comedy or a western or a gritty independent film... there's so much that I still want to do.

I grew up in southeastern Oklahoma on a working cattle ranch, and it was always very romantic to me: The West, the cowboy, the Western way of life.

I've never done an actual Western, and I would love to do that. I've done drama and dark comedy stuff. I've never really done a romantic comedy either. I would do that.

In countries other than Pakistan - I won't necessarily call them 'Western' - people support me. This is because people there respect others. They don't do this because I am a Pashtun or a Punjabi, a Pakistani, or an Iranian, they do it because of one's words and character. This is why I am being respected and supported there.

Australia - not western in geography, of course, but in every other respect for sure (it certainly doesn't want to be regarded as Asian, God forbid) - loves nothing more than to throw its weight around in South-East Asia by playing peacekeeper, carrying out its role as the United States' regional policeman.

The subject of Finnish poetry ought to have a special interest for the Japanese student, if only for the reason that Finnish poetry comes more closely in many respects to Japanese poetry than any other form of Western poetry.

Perhaps there is an idea among Japanese students that one general difference between Japanese and Western poetry is that the former cultivates short forms and the latter longer ones, gut this is only in part true.

I do not think there was anything abusive in my house. Yet, I stand by a lot of my critiques of Western parenting. I think there's a lot of questions about how you instill true self-esteem.

To be honest, I know that a lot of Asian parents are secretly shocked and horrified by many aspects of Western parenting.

The thing that makes love stories work, in my opinion, in movies and novels and country & western songs, is the feeling of longing.

I was familiar with that and 'Rio Bravo.' 'Rio Bravo' was what John Carpenter did, that brilliant move of taking a western and turning it into an urban flick. And from there you got, you know, all the cop genre movies of the time.

If you scroll through all the movies I've worked on, you can understand how I was a specialist in westerns, love stories, political movies, action thrillers, horror movies, and so on. So in other words, I'm no specialist, because I've done everything. I'm a specialist in music.