Edward Zwick

“People tend not to dwell on drama.”

“When you're in a fight, and you get hit, it hurts. And as you get older, you begin to take on the aches and the bruises of doing that.”

“I know that when I'm writing, I always want to be directing.”

“Forgive me, but what is the purpose of drama but catharsis?”

“I like to reveal people with some of the niceties of social behavior stripped away and the moral, ethical, and political issues are revealed.”

“I've done all sorts of different kinds of action. We did a thing in 'Blood Diamond,' the attack on Freetown, where I carefully staged the action but did not show the camera operators what we were going to film - so it has the feel of documentary, trying to capture something, and that gave it a whole different feel.”

“Yes, illness is serious, but the indignities are also funny. And that defines my world view.”

“It seems that almost every time a valuable natural resource is discovered in the world-whether it be diamonds, rubber, gold, oil, whatever-often what results is a tragedy for the country in which they are found. Making matters worse, the resulting riches from these resources rarely benefit the people of the country from which they come.”

“I've enjoyed the singular focus of not going back and forth between the two mediums. It isn't about the screen size so much as film being where the stories I'm most interested in telling happen to be at.”

“Like everyone, I was a kid who played chess when I was young. And I am admittedly old enough to have been around during the fervor of the match in Reykjavik and the rise of Bobby Fischer, so those two things conspired to pique my interest.”

“When we did 'Thirtysomething,' television was either about doctors, lawyers, or cops.”

“The military has been actually remarkable at dealing with race, but gender is an issue.”

“Adolescence is a time in which you experience everything more intensely.”

“I, for one, suffer from a little bit of superhero fatigue.”

“It's a harder time to make original, less conventional movies. But God, we need them!”

“The phone that you carry around with you. It's not just that it's a locator for anybody who wants to actually find out where you are, but it's also a leash. It's a reminder just how tethered you are.”

“Samurai culture did exist really, for hundreds of years and the notion of people trying to create some sort of a moral code, the idea that there existed certain behaviors that could be celebrated and that could be operative in a life.”

“When I first thought about the military - and this goes all the way back to 'Glory' - I learned really quickly that it isn't a monolith. It is really an institution made up of some people with very different personalities and people of different backgrounds.”

“I like to do everything I can to avoid rehearsals, even while we're rehearsing.”

“Sometimes when we weep in the movies we weep for ourselves or for a life unlived. Or we even go to the movies because we want to resist the emotion that's there in front of us. I think there is always a catharsis that I look for and that makes the movie experience worthwhile.”