I'm always in favor of Israel responding strongly when it's threatened. At the same time, a response to a response doesn't really solve anything. It just creates a perpetual-motion machine.

I think in terms of chapters. Every time I finish a movie, it's a chapter. When one of my kids graduates from school, that's a chapter.

I don't really have a schedule of when I want to show my children my movies.

There are three movies that I am exceptionally proud of in my life, and I rarely commit to a list of films that I like, that I've made... but these are the three films that I was passionately connected to. The first was 'ET,' the second 'Schindler's List,' and third is 'Saving Private Ryan.'

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.

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.

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.