The love we do not show here on Earth is the only thing that hurts us in the after-life.

You're not alone, are you? Because I'm here

I make some movies for myself. I do that sometimes when the subject matter is very sensitive and very personal and I really can't imagine that I'm an audience member. I would lose myself too much if I thought of myself as the audience. There are other types of genre films that I need to be able to direct from the audience, to be right next to you watching the picture being made.

It's funny, you make friends and you lose friends when you're making a movie.

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

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

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.