Americans easily forget that the air they breathe is the same as those in Europe or Africa or Asia; it's the same air as Jesus breathed. I would like them to remember that connection.

My mom had very low expectations for me, and she really had a point. I was a big problem at seventeen. If I had a kid like me, I would have those same expectations.

For me, it is especially important to maintain my interior life. My spirituality, my connectedness. That is the way I think. That is the way I deal with life and tough moments. I keep in touch with something bigger than me. And I connect with people who have an interior life - a connection with something bigger than them.

Filmmaking can give you everything, but at the same time, it can take everything from you.

When I think about growing up, I feel most affected by two travels that I made working in cargo boats when I was 16 and 18. One of them crossed through the Mississippi and Baton Rouge and Mobile, Alabama, and another went all the way to Europe.

Films like 'Babel' can transcend the one point-of-view formula that has reigned for so long.