R. J. Cutler Quotes

I'm interested in what it means to be an American. I'm interested in what it means to live in America. I'm interested in the kind of country that we live in and leave our kids. I'm interested in trying to define what that country is.

You can't get a contemporary story about what is going on inside government, and how society sees itself, on American TV.

We live in a world of crisis, of challenge, and... it's in our galleries that we can unpack the civilizations that we're seeing the current manifestations of.

I would say that no film is apolitical. There are politics in all films. Any film that is anchored in a society, any film that deals with humanity is necessarily political.

Every artistic expression is either influenced by or adds something to politics.

Literature offers not just a window into the culture of diverse regions, but also the society, the politics; it's the only place where we can keep track of ideas.

Every age has its own poetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.

For the most part, Americans speak of culture and politics as if they were two separate realms.

U. S. A. is the slice of a continent. U. S. A. is a group of holding companies, some aggregations of trade unions, a set of laws bound in calf, a radio network, a chain of moving picture theaters, a column of stock quotations …a public library full of old newspapers and dog-eared history books with protests scrawled on the margins in pencil. U. S. A. is the world’s greatest river valley fringed with mountains and hills, U. S. A. is a set of big-mouthed officials with too many bank accounts. U. S. A is a lot of men buried in their uniforms in Arlington Cemetery. U. S. A. is the letters at the end of the address when you are away from home. But mostly U. S. A. is the speech of the people.

A lot of people are surprised when I talk so much about the present, but politics is just a crucial part of archaeology.

At the heart of all problems lies the politics of the country.

At the time when talk of war, intimidation, and aggression is exchanged between politicians, the name of their country, Iran, is spoken here through her glorious culture, a rich and ancient culture that has been hidden under the heavy dust of politics.

Every Iranian artist, in one form or another, is political. Politics have defined our lives.

Most people don't see themselves as Democrats or Republicans. They see themselves as Americans.

My political awakening, if I can be as grand as to call it that, was all about what was happening around me. It wasn't some romantic, patriotic vision of Scotland going back to what it had been 300 years previously.

Fashion is a reflection of the time.

Up until the First World War, when people turned anti-German, Germany had been described by American political scientists as the model of democracy.

I've always been interested in the news, but I've always been interested in what's popular. I've always had a little bit of a populist take on things. Which I know is interesting when you talk about Donald Trump.

Political culture has become popular culture.

The idea of taking classic American stories and reinterpreting them for a time and place is not just commercially viable. These stories also carry a sensual nature of what it meant to be an American, and they deserve to be reinterpreted.

The theme my generation explored was the relationship between capitalism and art.

I think TV, at least most immediately, perhaps more so than film, is a reflection of society.

If Donald Trump's candidacy has proven anything, it's that the media has no idea what Americans care about.

Violence is totally accepted in this country.

In a weird way, our satirists probably have the most complicated, nuanced views of our politics now - Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver. I don't know what that says about our country.