I don't feel the need to direct. I tried to get other people to direct Dances, but they wouldn't do it. They all thought it was too long. One director wanted to cut the Civil War sequence. Another thought the white woman was very cliched.

If you're willing to tell somebody that you love them, are you also willing to say you're sorry? You need to, even when you think you're in the right.

I have instinctually thought I could do things in my life, and I followed that up by sometimes putting everything I have at risk - my money, my house - to make a movie.

There are a lot of things that come to bear on movies now that I don't think are good for movies. They're trying to appeal to the biggest demographic and, when they do that, you sometimes flatten out.

The truth is, I just want do things that are original and throw an original spin on them.

If it's fifty years from now and it still has the same value, that's a movie.

I don't think I'd have been as good as Bruce was. He was a better JFK than I would have been.