Even though I get older, what I do never gets old, and that's what I think keeps me hungry.

I think that the perceived downs in my own career come from just managing my time and not feeling that I have enough time for my family or my friends. You could put that in the personal life category but it's all one category because I've got to balance my family.

I just had a crazy, wild imagination all my life, and science fiction is the greatest outlet for me.

You can't intellectually purge yourself of who you are. Whatever that is, it's going to come out in the wash, the film wash. What you are is going to be relevant, if not to yourself, to the movies you make.

I've been told that I'm a very different person on the set than I am in postproduction when the movie's over and I'm editing, in that I get so wound up in the film that I become selfless to the point where I lose too much weight.

I love history. It was the only thing I did well at in school. I'm not ashamed to admit that I was not a good student but I was great at history.

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.