America is false to the past false to the present and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.

While I take inspiration from the past like most Americans I live for the future.

I look forward to a great future for America - a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint its wealth with our wisdom its power with our purpose.

I don't write literary fiction - I write books that are entertaining but are also I hope well-constructed and thoughtful and funny and have things to say about men and women and families and children and life in America today.

The prospects for a coherent hilarious and consistent American comedy seem to lessen every year as the poor waterlogged gassy corpse called 'Evan Almighty' proved when it floated ashore recently. So there's a temptation to think too highly of Robin Williams's uneven but occasionally funny 'License to Wed.'

What I fell in love with as a child was 'My Fair Lady ' 'Funny Face ' 'American in Paris ' and 'Singin' in the Rain.' Just perfect movies to me and I was dancing. I started ballet when I was three. And I fell in love with those movies and fell in love with Audrey Hepburn and Leslie Caron.

And there's a visceral fun in watching Team America and making it like taking a puppet and throwing it against the wall. Because it's not CG there's something funny about it.

The American audience has really opened up to women being A.) funny and B.) kinda crude. 'Bridesmaids' is R-rated and I think it was a major coup for women to have an R-rated comedy that did really well. Same as 'Bad Teacher.'

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.

It's funny how people who ain't never been down there can think that America is so fair and that we should be alright. It's funny that the people who have their foot on our neck are telling us 'Get up. What's wrong with you?'

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.

People instantly assume you can't have a platonic friendship with someone of the opposite sex. I think this may be specific to L.A. - or America.

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.

The fact is with every friendship you make and every bond of trust you establish you are shaping the image of America projected to the rest of the world. That is so important. So when you study abroad you're actually helping to make America stronger.

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

Now we understand much more clearly. why people from all over the world want to come to New York and to America. It's called freedom.

If a jerk burns the flag America is not threatened democracy is not under siege freedom is not at risk.

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.

My father described this tall lady who stands in the middle of the New York harbor holding high a torch to welcome people seeking freedom in America. I instantly fell in love.

America has never seen itself as a national state like all others but rather as an experiment in human freedom and democracy.

Latinos have fought in all of America's wars beginning with the Revolutionary War. Many Latinos are fighting and dying for our country today in Iraq just as several of their ancestors fought for freedom in Mexico over a century ago.