There's no better way to test a person than to put them in the middle of a war. That's clearly going to show what kind of a character you're telling a story about.

I'm very used to working with first time actors - you can just look back at 'E.T.' with Drew Barrymore, and Christian Bale from 'Empire of the Sun,' who'd never made a movie before.

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.

There is something about killing people at close range that is excruciating. It's bound to try a man's soul.

The most expensive habit in the world is celluloid, not heroin, and I need a fix every few years.

I don't think that anybody in any war thinks of themselves as a hero. The minute anybody presumes that they are heroes, they get their boots taken away from them and buried in the sand.

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.