You shouldn't dream your film, you should make it!

It is important to know who your friends are and to stay, remain loyal to your friends, despite what you hear, despite the mistakes that are made in friendships and misunderstandings that commonly occur, to be able to forgive and to move on, you have to be able to remember the values of friendship.

I see some parallels between then [Lincoln's era] and now. Certainly the division of ideologies between two parties, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. In 1865, the Democrats were the Conservatives and the Republicans were the progressives, and today it's just the opposite.

I've been told that I'm a very different person on the set than I am in postproduction when the movie's over and I'm editing, in that I get so wound up in the film that I become selfless to the point where I lose too much weight.

I quit college so fast I didn't even clean out my locker.

I basically took something that was extremely erotic and very intentional, and I reduced it to a simple kiss. I got a lot of criticism for that.

I wouldn't have filmed The Color Purple if the book had been a big fat novel. The reason I read it is because it is thin.