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

Even if I'd had a really happy relationship with my father and there was no emotional hiatus for a decade and a half, I probably would still have made some of the same choices for movies that I've made.

If Bush, as I believe, has reliable information on the fact that Saddam Hussein is making weapons of mass destruction, I cannot not support the policies of his government.

Only a generation of readers will span a generation of writers.

I've kept the people who've been in my career who I feel are my family. Kathy [Kennedy] had been with me since 1978. Janusz Kaminsky, my cinematographer, has made every movie with me since Schindler's List. Michael Kahn has cut every movie I've directed since 1976 when we made Close Encounters together. Rick Carter has done more than 15 of my directed films as a production designer.

Every movie you're going to forget that it's 3D whether it's widescreen or whatever it is, you're going to forget everything if the movie is working. If the movie doesn't work or if the movie generically doesn't work then immediately you start to pick apart whatever has contributed to that.

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.