•  "My father's people... are from Fairfax in northern Virginia, just across the Mason-Dixon line. So it was an honour to play Lee, he was a great general."

•  "My uncle always said that I could have been a rancher."

•  "Open Range is an imitation of films that went before rather than the true West."

•  "Over on the Eastern Shore of Maryland at St. Michaels and Oxford? Great crab cakes."

•  "Some religious people might ask why I would make such a movie and emphasize that this evangelical preacher has weaknesses."

•  "Spending two years on my uncle's ranch in Montana as a young man gave me the wisdom and the thrust to do westerns."

•  "That scene was meant to be there. It was the power of the Holy Ghost."

•  "The beginning and the end of the tango is the walk. I practice once a week, twice a week maybe."

•  "The cultural contrast I saw between religions... Catholics have a lot of mediators, going through saints and Mary or whatever. Protestants in general say things to God directly."

•  "The greatest king of Israel, King David, the author of the Psalms, sent a man out to die in battle so that he could sleep with his wife."