The Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Jihadism have nothing to do with each other.

I love editing. It's one of my favorite parts about filmmaking.

With all the movies I've made about history, it's not really fun because you're trying to get it right. You've got history telling how it was, and then my imagination is telling me how I wish it had been, but I can't go there, so I have to censor myself. I'm very good about stopping myself from creating history that never occurred, but it's frustrating.

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.

The work that I'm proudest of is the work that I'm most afraid of.

I was a scared kid... I think I was born a nervous wreck, and I think movies were one way to find a way transferring my own private horrors to everyone else's lives. It was less of an escape and more of an exorcism.

I don't make unconventional stories; I don't make non-linear stories. I like linear storytelling a lot.