Lincoln was the greatest speaker and he was ridiculed for how he looked, you know?

I think that you try to raise the bar on whatever you do because you know, in this day of having to deal with a lot of reality TV, people say that scripted programming is dying, so you have to try to create something that can live in people's minds, long after they see it.

If you're going to tear down a hero, you should never forget that you're tearing down someone else's hero. You're tearing down somebody else's son. You might have to face her one day.

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.

I can't say I really see much difference between my son and daughters except that my girls will occasionally make me a sandwich and my son won't.

I would hate to see a UFO. Because it would ruin my life. I would have to talk about it the rest of my life, and everybody in the room would go, "Poor Kevin." Because you could not turn your back on the idea that you saw it.

I want to be a part of something, and when we define movies now based on how they do on the weekend. We live in a society of "thumbs up, thumbs down."