There is something that you have that no one else ever had ... When you watch Kirk's [Douglas] performance in anything, in anything he's ever done, you cannot take your eyes off of him. It's not possible to look away from him.

I don't go through a torturous intellectual process to decide what to direct. I know what I want to direct the second I read something or hear a story. I just know when it grabs me in a certain way I want to direct it. And then I spend the next four to six months trying to talk myself out of it, because directing is really hard! But it's true, I know essentially when and what I want to do next... it's an undeniable feeling I get and it's not the same feeling I get when I wind up producing something.

Casting sometimes is fate and destiny more than skill and talent, from a director's point of view.

Desperate times require desperate measures. What Lincoln and the Lobbyist for the Amendment and the Manager of the Amendment and himself, what they did to get this passed was not illegal. It was murky, but what they did was noble and grand. How they went about it was somewhat murky. Nothing they did was really illegal.

I think the greatest thing about DVD is the quality of sound and picture; the real estate to put more extras on; and, my favorite point is it stores quietly in very subtle places in your home .

My movies more often are told through pictures, not words. But in this case, the pictures took second position to the incredible words of Abraham Lincoln and his presence [...] I was less interested in an outpouring of imagery than in letting the most human moment of this story evolve before us.

I basically took something that was extremely erotic and very intentional, and I reduced it to a simple kiss. I got a lot of criticism for that.