And I may often question choices I make as a producer. But I've never questioned the choices I make as a director.

It is not my job to compare my movies. I don't like to compare my films with other movies because I don't really have that perspective. It is an intellectual exercise, but it doesn't intuitively come to me.

I felt like an alien. I always felt like I never belonged to any group that I wanted to belong to.

I missed my dad a lot growing up, even though we were together as a family. My dad was really a workaholic. And he was always working.

I made 'Saving Private Ryan' for my father. He's the one who filled my head with war stories when I was growing up.

People have forgotten how to tell a story. Stories don't have a middle or an end any more. They usually have a beginning that never stops beginning.

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.