I'm usually trying to react to what the actors are coming up with. And then the environment, and then the story.

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.

I think over the course of 14 films, I'm returning to a place that I know to tell a story... the same way Spielberg returned to fantasy, Lucas returned to the 'Star Wars' saga, or John Ford returned to the western.

If you put up posters around town for high-school kids, high-school kids will come. If you're casting politicians, you can't put up posters and have politicians come down.

One thing that education can do is it can provide us with an opportunity to understand one another better, and so while I've spent a lot of my time in the world of politics, I've always felt that it is really not politics that will solve this for us.

We cannot create observers by saying 'observe', but by giving them the power and the means for this observation and these means are procured through education of the senses.

Education in the light of present-day knowledge and need calls for some spirited and creative innovations both in the substance and the purpose of current pedagogy.

The difficulty is, Pell Grants are an attempt to do the right thing, and that is to give the low-income student an opportunity to access higher education, and that's a good thing. And welfare was an attempt to help those most in need. The difficulty is, often times a program is so successful that it grows and grows and grows and grows.