If the world ran the way a crew runs a set, we'd have a better, more progressive world.

Like, I took no poetic license with 'Schindler's List' because that was historical, factual documents.

Movies are always in a state of locomotion. You start with a general idea of how it should feel and then you find you've got a runaway train. You have to race to catch up: the movie is telling you what it wants to become, and when that happens there's no greater feeling.

I would lose myself too much if I thought of myself as the audience.

I just think that the qualities of leadership are unknown even to the leader until he's tested and given a challenge.

My filmmaking really began with technology. It began through technology, not through telling stories, because my 8mm movie camera was the way into whatever I decided to do.

There were so many odd, strange things about Abraham Lincoln that I think nobody knew how to pigeonhole him.