Steven Spielberg Quotations | Page 4

The essence of what it is to be American is the deep moral urge to be free, to freely express yourself and have the right to do so, and to look at all people as equals.

With all the movies I've made about history, it's not really fun because you're trying to get it right. You've got history telling how it was, and then my imagination is telling me how I wish it had been, but I can't go there, so I have to censor myself. I'm very good about stopping myself from creating history that never occurred, but it's frustrating.

I basically went into business for myself. But it never amounted to anything. I learned a lot about editing and dubbing by watching all the professionals do it, but I never got a job out of my imposition.

This is a time when we need to smile more and Hollywood movies are supposed to do that for people in difficult times...

You look at war as something that is putting your best friend in jeopardy. You are responsible for the person in front of you and the person behind you, and the person to the left of you and the person to the right of you.

Documentaries are the first line of education, and the second line of education is dramatization, such as 'The Pacific'.

Tracking action without cutting is the least jarring method of placing the audience into a real-time experience where they are the ones making the subtle choices of where and when to look.

I don't really distinguish between a fictional hero and a real life hero as a basis for any comparison. To me, a hero is a hero. I like making pictures about people who have a personal mission in life or at least in the life of a story who start out with certain low expectations and then over achieve our highest expectations for them. That's the kind of character arc I love dabbling in as a director, as a filmmaker.

I'd rather direct than produce. Any day. And twice on Sunday.

Am I allowed to say I really wanted this? This is fantastic.

Kurosawa is the pictorial Shakespeare of our time.

The world would be a poorer place without Doctor Who.

My movies more often are told through pictures, not words. But in this case, the pictures took second position to the incredible words of Abraham Lincoln and his presence [...] I was less interested in an outpouring of imagery than in letting the most human moment of this story evolve before us.

I think all directors should be animators...

If I weren't a director, I would want to be a film composer.

I am a very impatient director.

Steve Jobs was the greatest inventor since Thomas Edison. He put the world at our fingertips.

When you listen, you learn. You absorb like a sponge and your life becomes so much better than when you are just trying to be listened to all the time.

The internet is watching us now. If they want to. They can see what sites you visit. In the future, television will be watching us, and customizing itself to what it knows about us. The thrilling thing is, that will make us feel we're part of the medium. The scary thing is, we'll lose our right to privacy. An ad will appear in the air around us, talking directly to us.

I always like to think of the audience when I am directing. Because I am the audience.

I go out and look for a good story to tell and if I like it enough and I decide to direct it, I become dangerously involved in becoming a part of that story.

Audiences are harder to please if you're just giving them effects, but they're easy to please if it's a good story.

Before I go off and direct a movie, I always look at four films. They tend to be The Seven Samurai, Lawrence Of Arabia, It's A Wonderful Life and The Searchers.

I even get inspired by movies that aren't very good, because there's always something good in movies that are collectively thought of as a failure. There's good in everything, I find.

Our one goal is to give the world a taste of peace, friendship and understanding. Through the visual arts, the art of celebration of life.

I don't dream at night, I dream at day, I dream all day; I'm dreaming for living.

The only time I'm totally happy is when I'm watching films or making them.

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 thought film was more important than life itself for many years. But I was naive to the world until my first child was born in 1985.