“I don't think any movie or any book or any work of art can solve the stalemate in the Middle East today. But it's certainly worth a try.”
“You know, I don't really do that much looking inside me when I'm working on a project. Whatever I am becomes what that film is. But I change you change.”
“I get that same queasy, nervous, thrilling feeling every time I go to work. That's never worn off since I was 12 years-old with my dad's 8-millimeter movie camera.”
“My dad took me to my first movie.”
“You have many years ahead of you to create the dreams that we can't even imagine dreaming. You have done more for the collective unconscious of this planet than you will ever know.”
“Documentaries are the first line of education, and the second line of education is dramatization, such as 'The Pacific'.”
“Whether in success or in failure, I'm proud of every single movie I've ever directed.”
“It all starts with the script: it's not worth taking myself away from my family if I don't have something I'm really passionate about.”
“If Bush, as I believe, has reliable information on the fact that Saddam Hussein is making weapons of mass destruction, I cannot not support the policies of his government.”
“I think documentaries are the greatest way to educate an entire generation that doesn't often look back to learn anything about the history that provided a safe haven for so many of us today.”
“I was making a lot of 8mm home movies, since I was twelve, making little dramas and comedies with the neighborhood kids.”
“The public has an appetite for anything about imagination - anything that is as far away from reality as is creatively possible.”
“I'm not really interested in making money.”
“I wanted to do another movie that could make us laugh and cry and feel good about the world. I wanted to do something else that could make us smile. This is a time when we need to smile more and Hollywood movies are supposed to do that for people in difficult times.”
“I don't really have a schedule of when I want to show my children my movies.”
“I want to be the Cecil B. DeMille of science fiction.”
“For one thing, I don't think that anybody in any war thinks of themselves as a hero.”
“I interviewed survivors, I went to Poland, saw the cities and spent time with the people and spoke to the Jews who had come back to Poland after the war and talked about why they had come back.”
“When war comes, two things happen - profits go way, way up and all perishables go way, way down. There becomes a market for them.”
“In the re-creation of combat situations, and this is coming from a director who's never been in one, being mindful of what these veterans have actually gone through, you find that the biggest concern is that you don't look at war as a geopolitical endeavor.”
“All of us every single year, we're a different person. I don't think we're the same person all our lives.”