The delicate balance of mentoring someone is not creating them in your own image, but giving them the opportunity to create themselves.

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

I'm always in favor of Israel responding strongly when it's threatened.

I think one of the worst things that happened to me was, you know, my voluntary fallout with my father. And then the greatest thing that happened to me was when I saw the light, and realized I needed to love him in a way that he could love me back.

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.

My dad took me to my first movie.

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.