Audiences are harder to please if you're just giving them effects, but they're easy to please if it's a good story.

'The Color Purple' is the kind of character piece that a director like Sidney Lumet could do brilliantly with one hand tied behind his back.

I dream for a living.

I committed to directing 'Catch Me If You Can' not because of the divorce component, but principally because Frank Abagnale did things that were the most astonishing scams I had ever heard.

I've discovered I've got this preoccupation with ordinary people pursued by large forces.

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.

Even if I'd had a really happy relationship with my father and there was no emotional hiatus for a decade and a half, I probably would still have made some of the same choices for movies that I've made.