"I read this recently — it’s a small and significant book. It’s the autobiographical account of a teenage boy who journeys through the Nazi death camps with his father, desperately clinging to life and each other when humanity has become perversely distorted. It’s almost beyond human and beyond language. When I read it, I wondered how someone would interpret this story if they dug it up in ancient ruins centuries from now. Could it be true? What are we capable of in terms of cruelty and survival?"

"What’s my fifth favorite movie? Now there have been quite a number of them. See now I’m sort of in no-man’s land, because I’m thinking Bonnie and Clyde, I’m thinking Chinatown… I’m just wandering around now. [laughs] One of my favorite books was Black Beauty; I read it when I was eight-years-old, and I’m trying to find if there was a movie, like that, that sticks with me. Oh, I know! Moby Dick. Yes. Now that was filmmaking. John Huston. Call me… Ishmael. I read the book, and there are very few books that I have read and seen the movie and liked the movie. Gregory Peck was in two of ’em: Moby Dick and To Kill a Mockingbird. Gregory Peck was one of my favorite actors. Gregory Peck and Gary Cooper and Humphrey Bogart, those guys."