When I first envisioned 'Funny Games' in the mid-1990s it was my intention to have an American audience watch the movie. It is a reaction to a certain American cinema its violence its naivety the way American cinema toys with human beings. In many American films violence is made consumable.

I'm a misplaced American but don't know where I was misplaced.

Television has changed the American child from an irresistable force to an immovable object.

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.

The part which American friendship played in helping us to win the freedom we enjoy in this part of Ireland has been gratefully recognized and acknowledged by our people.

Look I worked with American Republican presidents and Democratic presidents all of them and each of them has shown a deep and profound friendship to Israel you know? I can't remember anybody who was in that sense negative as far as Israel is concerned.

We've got to understand that the whole nature of the way American democracy guards its freedom has been changed.

When I went off to the army when I was 17 years old I believed in America and the rights of freedom. But today I believe my government is lying to the American people and that my president George Bush is a criminal.

I have always been a firm believer in the longstanding American principle of having the right to bear arms and I will remain committed to see that this freedom is not infringed upon revoked or limited in any way.

It could be my British need for discipline that makes me admire the American appetite for freedom and passion.

American movies and music deliver themes of freedom innocence and power that appeal to others - partly because America itself was put together out of a multiplicity of national traditions.

They were singing in French but the melody was freedom and any American could understand that.

All my life Americans have been accustomed to thinking of theirs as 'the richest freest' country in the world. By most measurements it was long a contender for that honor and - among the larger countries if equal weight were given to wealth and indices of freedom - probably did deserve to be so described.

That's part of American greatness is discrimination. Yes sir. Inequality I think breeds freedom and gives a man opportunity.

All Americans and freedom-loving people around the world owe President Reagan our deepest gratitude for his strong principled leadership that ended the Cold War and brought freedom to millions of people.

It is hard to know how many people do but given that the people are so docile towards the rulers nowadays very few Americans show the passion for freedom that our forefathers had.

I do believe that freedom isn't free - but today the corporate and political right wing is trying to cheapen this truly American value. They've been cynically using the word 'freedom' to rally the American public against its own best interests.

Every American deserves to live in freedom to have his or her privacy respected and a chance to go as far as their ability and effort will take them - regardless of race gender ethnicity or economic circumstances.

Native Americans are the original inhabitants of the land that now constitutes the United States. They have helped develop the fundamental principles of freedom of speech and separation of powers that form the foundation of the United States Government.

I wish we would all remember that being American is not just about the freedom we have it is about those who gave it to us.

What does it mean to be an American? While each of us may have our own specific answer to that question we likely can agree on the basic principles of America: freedom equal opportunity and rights accompanied by responsibilities.

The American idea is as promising imaginative and full of the unexpected as the land itself. The land represents freedom - the frontier the ability to make a new future with your own bare hands.

I suppose there's a melancholy tone at the back of the American mind a sense of something lost. And it's the lost world of Thomas Jefferson. It is the lost sense of innocence that we could live with a very minimal state with a vast sense of space in which to work out freedom.

As our federal government has grown too large and too powerful the real loss has been the freedom of people to govern their own lives and participate fully in the American dream.