I make some movies for myself. I do that sometimes when the subject matter is very sensitive and very personal and I really can't imagine that I'm an audience member. I would lose myself too much if I thought of myself as the audience. There are other types of genre films that I need to be able to direct from the audience, to be right next to you watching the picture being made.

My movies more often are told through pictures, not words. But in this case, the pictures took second position to the incredible words of Abraham Lincoln and his presence [...] I was less interested in an outpouring of imagery than in letting the most human moment of this story evolve before us.

I made 'Empire of the Sun' in Shanghai in the 1980s and want to come back one day to make a movie in China.

I have a choice - I can either watch all the dailies, or I can follow the social media. I can't do both.

I think all directors should be animators.

Whatever affect any of my films have on audiences, I just kind of stop at the door. I make them and I just don't go outside after they're over.

You know, I don't really do that much looking inside me when I'm working on a project. Whatever I am becomes what that film is. But I change; you change.