I turned down 'Harry Potter' and 'Spider-Man,' two movies that I knew would be phenomenally successful, because I had already made movies like that before and they offered no challenge to me. I don't need my ego to be reminded.

All of my movies are about how I wish the world would work. I've made very few movies about how the world worked. I could name them on one and a half hands, about how my movies have been very reflective of how the world was exactly. A lot of my movies are really about the way I wish the world was, and that's what this whole art form is all about. It's an interpretive art form.

I felt like an alien. I always felt like I never belonged to any group that I wanted to belong to.

I'm not really interested in making money. That's always come as the result of success, but it's not been my goal.

Lincoln believed in the American people.

Documentaries are the first line of education, and the second line of education is dramatization, such as 'The Pacific'.

There's no better way to test a person than to put them in the middle of a war. That's clearly going to show what kind of a character you're telling a story about.