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The American culture promotes personal responsibility, the dignity of work, the value of education, the merit of service, devotion to a purpose greater than self, and at the foundation, the pre-eminence of family.

Americans have a profound longing for heroes - now perhaps more than ever. We need our explorers, our sports icons, our Medal of Freedom winners, our Nobel laureates. We need our Greatest Generation warriors, our 'Sully' Sullenbergers, our Neil Armstrongs. On some level, we still subscribe to the myth of the man in the white hat.

You won't find a CEO who doesn't talk about a 'powerful culture' as a source of competitive advantage. At the same time, you'd be hard-pressed to find a CEO who has much of a clue about the strength of that culture.

American mass media culture, with its celebrities, shopping hysteria, sound bites, formulaic plots, received ideas, and nauseating repetitions, depresses me.

Americans worship creativity the way they worship physical beauty - as a way of enjoying elitism without guilt: God did it.

The down side of Americans being obsessed with pop culture is that they kind of like it light.

I truly appreciate the special qualities that America and American national myths offer me.

We live in a youth-obsessed, aesthetically obsessed culture. That is no more evident than in the film industry.

America itself has been through so many challenges since that fateful day back in 1776. Our culture has been a roll-up-your-sleeves-and-go-to-work culture.

Entertainment is one of America's greatest exports. And the stories that we tell about people inform the world about how to think about people.