One of the gratuities about being a director is that you can volunteer yourself out of difficult details.

Steve Jobs was the greatest inventor since Thomas Edison. He put the world at our fingertips.

There's been more written about Lincoln than movies made about him or television portraying him. He's kind of a stranger to our industry, to this medium. You have to go back to the 1930s to find a movie that's just about Abraham Lincoln. I just found that my fascination with Lincoln, which started as a child, got to the point where after reading so much about him I thought there was a chance to tell a segment of his life to to moviegoers.

Everybody loves a winner, but nobody loves a winner.

I've just always had a personal fascination with the myth of Abraham Lincoln. And once you start to read about him and the Civil War and everything leading up to the Civil War, you start to understand that the myth is created when we think we understand a character and we reduce him to a kind of cultural national stereotype.

The essence of what it is to be American is the deep moral urge to be free, to freely express yourself and have the right to do so, and to look at all people as equals.

I think that is the secret of great acting. You have to bring your imagination to the party. You've got to have a great imagination.