I've always been very hopeful which I guess isn't strange coming from me. I don't want to call myself an optimist. I want to say that I've always been full of hope. I've never lost that. I have a lot of hope for this country and for the entire world. . .

I made 'Empire of the Sun' in Shanghai in the 1980s and want to come back one day to make a movie in China.

You know, I don't really do that much looking inside me when I'm working on a project. Whatever I am becomes what that film is. But I change; you change.

I see some parallels between then [Lincoln's era] and now. Certainly the division of ideologies between two parties, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. In 1865, the Democrats were the Conservatives and the Republicans were the progressives, and today it's just the opposite.

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

For one thing, I don't think that anybody in any war thinks of themselves as a hero.

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