I once said that CGI makes you less inventive. At the time I was bemoaning the loss of the practical stunt. If a stunt can be done practically and safely, I'd rather do it old-style.

There's been more written about Lincoln than movies made about him or television portraying him. He's kind of a stranger to our industry, to this medium. You have to go back to the 1930s to find a movie that's just about Abraham Lincoln. I just found that my fascination with Lincoln, which started as a child, got to the point where after reading so much about him I thought there was a chance to tell a segment of his life to to moviegoers.

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

All of my movies are about how I wish the world would work. I've made very few movies about how the world worked. I could name them on one and a half hands, about how my movies have been very reflective of how the world was exactly. A lot of my movies are really about the way I wish the world was, and that's what this whole art form is all about. It's an interpretive art form.

The most amazing thing for me is that every single person who sees a movie, not necessarily one of my movies, brings a whole set of unique experiences. Now, through careful manipulation and good storytelling, you can get everybody to clap at the same time, to hopefully laugh at the same time, and to be afraid at the same time.

Not every movie, in my opinion, should be in 3D. There are a lot of stories I wouldn't shoot in 3D. But, you know, there are movies that are perfect in 3D.

You never really know how good of a leader you are until there is something there is lead us to, toward or through or to overcome.