When I was a kid, there was no collaboration; it's you with a camera bossing your friends around. But as an adult, filmmaking is all about appreciating the talents of the people you surround yourself with and knowing you could never have made any of these films by yourself.

Lincoln believed in the American people.

You can't start a movie by having the attitude that the script is finished, because if you think the script is finished, your movie is finished before the first day of shooting.

I had a great time creating the future on 'Minority Report,' and it's a future that is coming true faster than any of us thought it would.

Technology can be our best friend, and technology can also be the biggest party pooper of our lives. It interrupts our own story, interrupts our ability to have a thought or a daydream, to imagine something wonderful, because we're too busy bridging the walk from the cafeteria back to the office on the cell phone.

I'm not in a race with anybody to make the biggest hit movie anymore. I am just trying to tell stories that I can stay interested in for the two years it takes me to supervise the writing and to direct them.

It's still a mystery to me, but even though my mother was like an older sister to me, I kind of put her up on a pedestal.