Prior to Saving Private Ryan I never worked with men. I was always working with some babe, and it was always about falling in love, and it just got turned around. I'm not looking for any particular kind of story. I wait until it comes across my desk.

The filmmakers aren't running the studios anymore. Sometimes people who like films are making them, but by and large, they have to go report quarterly earnings and all that stuff. The competition is so huge that it's very hard to get people to show up to see any movie in the theater, much less an original one that isn't a version of something else they saw.

I love my family and I love my kids, but when the moments come, it's not as though you can just substitute your own life with what you're doing on film. You have to go to some other place where it's bigger than your own life.

We're part of a greater humanity and we can actually affect the world by the choices we make once we leave the theater.

When you're on the open sea and you drop 10, 12 feet and your stomach goes up around your neck - that's when you have problems.

We are all God's animated cartoons.

I've made over 20 movies, and 5 of them are good.