I'm not a great man to my children. I'm just 'Pop.' The more involved I am with my kids, it keeps my head flat on top.

Like, I took no poetic license with 'Schindler's List' because that was historical, factual documents.

The creative process is a very collaborative process. I know it might seem that way because so much ink is spilled and the media is obsessed with business and numbers and studios... but filmmakers don't think of it that way. We just go off and we tell our stories. It's the same torture that we adore, it's the same torture that our forefathers endured making movies in the golden era of Hollywood. So, from my perspective it's no different, I'm sure, from the men and women who I admire so much who made the earliest movies.

Audience members are only concerned about the story, the concept, the bells and whistles and the noise that a popular film starts to make even before it's popular. So audiences will not be drawn to the technology; they'll be drawn to the story. And I hope it always remains that way.

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.

Making a movie and not directing the little moments is like drinking a soda and leaving the little slurp puddle for someone else.

Movies become living organisms that graduate from a filmmaker's sphere of influence and pretty much look back and tell you how they need to be said goodbye to. A movie often turns around and looks at you and says, "Here is who I am, and that's maybe now how you see me, but that's who I've become." And you've got to be open enough to go with that.