The trouble with movies as a business is that it's an art, and the trouble with movies as art is that it's a business.

It's been quite a ride. I loved every minute of it.

You can spend a lifetime, and, if you're honest with yourself, never once was your work perfect.

Dirty Harry, for example. Clint Eastwood was not a rogue cop. He was a maverick cop, but he was a good guy.

I've played three presidents, three saints and two geniuses - and that's probably enough for any man.

In recent years, anyone in the government, certainly anyone in the FBI or the CIA, or recently, in again, Clint's film, In the Line of Fire, the main bad guy is the chief advisor to the president.

Shakespeare is the outstanding example of how that can be done. In all of Shakespeare's plays, no matter what tragic events occur, no matter what rises and falls, we return to stability in the end.

Undeniably the American art form, too. And yet more and more, we see films made that diminish the American experience and example. And sometimes trash it completely.

Well, we have certainly produced great art before we did this. In my view, there are any number of areas of government which tax money should not be spent.

As an artist, I understand that, and I value the creative input of the artist.

Society mends its wounds. And that's invariably true in all the tragedies, in the comedies as well. And certainly in the histories.

To the world, you are America.

You could think of extraordinary examples to the contrary: The Grapes of Wrath... and even into the 70s.

You cut their money back, for one thing... I go back a long way with the NEA.

And their pals vote for their stuff when they're not on the panel, and it just keeps going that way. And they tend to be very fringe artists, so anything before the 20th century is not worth considering. This is out of date.

The big studio era is from the coming of sound until 1950, until I came in... I came in at a crux in film, which was the end of the studio era and the rise of filmmaking.