Even in high school I was very interested in history - why people do the things they do. As a kid I spent a lot of time trying to relate the past to the present.

Lucas frames his early fascination with history less as a catalog of dates than as an inquiry into human motivation—“why people do the things they do.” The second sentence emphasizes a habit of analogy: using the past as a lens for understanding contemporary life. Read against his later filmmaking, the remark helps explain his attraction to mythic and historical patterns (rise and fall of republics, cycles of conflict, generational change) and his tendency to build fictional worlds that echo recognizable political and cultural dynamics. The quote presents historical thinking as a practical tool for interpreting the present, not merely an academic interest.