I have made all my films for my children with the exception of my first film because my oldest daughter wasn't born when I was making the film about the Brooklyn Bridge.

It is the great arrogance of the present to forget the intelligence of the past

In most films music is brought in at the end, after the picture is more or less locked, to amplify the emotions the filmmaker wants you to feel.

The reason why you do history, and particularly why you do war, is that you want to make sure that in the next war, some lessons were learned. There's a saying: "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Or Ecclesiastes: "What has been will be again. What has been done will be done again." Human nature always superimposes itself - its strength and its frailty over the rush of chaos of ongoing events - and we can perceive patterns and themes and motifs.

It follows the seasons, beginning each year with the fond expectancy of springtime and ending with the hard facts of autumn.

I don't think that there has been a film that I've done that hasn't been influenced by libraries and archives.

In a sense I've made the same film over and over again. In all of them I've asked, 'Who are we as Americans?