I was always a filmmaker before I was anything else. If I was always anything, I was a storyteller, and it never really made much of a difference to me what medium I worked in.

I never gave my career much strategic thought. Maybe I should have.

When you read a history or biography you are entitled to imagine that it is as accurate as the authors can make it. That research has gone into it and we say "This is a history of the civil war, this is a biography of Lincoln" whatever. But you don't make any such supposition when you say "This is a historical novel."

Schools and libraries are the twin cornerstones of a civilized society. Libraries are only good if people use them, like books only exist when someone reads them.

I'm mainly interested in people trying to figure s#!t out.

Actors will change their face, will change their hair, will change their voice, will disappear into the role. A movie star doesn't disappear.

We were extremely prescient in that we predicted the Soviet coup before it happened. That was kind of amazing.