I've been shooting movies and television shows for now 47 years and I've worked with the best of them and [Kirk Douglas] is the only movie star I ever met.

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 have never before, in my long and eclectic career, been gifted with such an abundance of natural beauty as I experienced filming 'War Horse' on Dartmoor.

I don't think that anybody in any war thinks of themselves as a hero. The minute anybody presumes that they are heroes, they get their boots taken away from them and buried in the sand.

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.

This is a time when we need to smile more and Hollywood movies are supposed to do that for people in difficult times.

Movies principally require the best of everybody, all at the same time, being the best they can be. Not just like five people being the best they've ever been, and 10 people not being the best they could be. It's like if everybody is either doing their greatest work, or the whole house of cards falls apart.