When I was thinking about The Lion King, I said, we have to do what theater does best. What theater does best is to be abstract and not to do literal reality.

I love directing Shakespeare on film. It's fantastic that the actors would do exactly the same thing and be true to their part.

You have to stop yourself from even thinking about failing.

An artist is an entertainer, number one - a storyteller who takes people someplace, who gives them what they didn't know they wanted.

You program music with an image and then people are desensitized.

Spider-Man is a genuine American myth with a dark, primal power, but it's also got this great superhero, and - hey! - he can fly through the theater at 40 miles an hour. It's got villains, it's got skyscrapers, it's colorful, it's Manhattan. I knew it would be a challenge, but I saw the inherent theatricality in it, and I couldn't resist.

I'm not going to spend two years on a film or four years on an opera if I don't feel like I can put my own self into it. That doesn't mean it has to be about myself.