Steven Spielberg Quotations

Technology can be our best friend, and technology can also be the biggest party pooper of our lives. It interrupts our own story, interrupts our ability to have a thought or a daydream, to imagine something wonderful, because we're too busy bridging the walk from the cafeteria back to the office on the cell phone.

Before statehood was achieved, Syria and Egypt had their tanks and military equipment lined up to invade Tel Aviv and destroy it; but the Israelis scrambled together an air force, some of it from old Second World War Messerschmidts, and the invasion was halted.

Remember, science fiction's always been the kind of first level alert to think about things to come. It's easier for an audience to take warnings from sci-fi without feeling that we're preaching to them. Every science fiction movie I have ever seen, any one that's worth its weight in celluloid, warns us about things that ultimately come true.

My dad took me out to see a meteor shower when I was a little kid, and it was scary for me because he woke me up in the middle of the night. My heart was beating; I didn't know what he wanted to do. He wouldn't tell me, and he put me in the car and we went off, and I saw all these people lying on blankets, looking up at the sky.

I've always wanted to tell a story about Lincoln. I saw a paternal father figure; I saw someone who was completely, stubbornly committed to his ideals, to his vision.

Well, luckily with animation, fantasy is your friend.

I love editing. It's one of my favorite parts about filmmaking.

All of us every single year, we're a different person. I don't think we're the same person all our lives.

The most amazing thing for me is that every single person who sees a movie, not necessarily one of my movies, brings a whole set of unique experiences. Now, through careful manipulation and good storytelling, you can get everybody to clap at the same time, to hopefully laugh at the same time, and to be afraid at the same time.

There is a fine line between censorship and good taste and moral responsibility.

As a Jew I am aware of how important the existence of Israel is for the survival of us all. And because I am proud of being Jewish, I am worried by the growing anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in the world.

People have forgotten how to tell a story. Stories don't have a middle or an end any more. They usually have a beginning that never stops beginning.

I think the key divide between the interactive media and the narrative media is the difficulty in opening up an empathic pathway between the gamer and the character, as differentiated from the audience and the characters in a movie or a television show.

I have never before, in my long and eclectic career, been gifted with such an abundance of natural beauty as I experienced filming 'War Horse' on Dartmoor.

The delicate balance of mentoring someone is not creating them in your own image, but giving them the opportunity to create themselves.

When I was a kid, there was no collaboration; it's you with a camera bossing your friends around. But as an adult, filmmaking is all about appreciating the talents of the people you surround yourself with and knowing you could never have made any of these films by yourself.

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.

You shouldn't dream your film, you should make it!

History opens up new worlds to film-makers all the time.

The only time I have a good hunch the audience is going to be there is when I make the sequel to 'Jurassic Park' or I make another Indiana Jones movie. I know I've got a good shot at getting an audience on opening night. Everything else that is striking out into new territory is a crap shoot.

Even though I get older, what I do never gets old, and that's what I think keeps me hungry.

Casting sometimes is fate and destiny more than skill and talent, from a director's point of view.

I never felt comfortable with myself, because I was never part of the majority. I always felt awkward and shy and on the outside of the momentum of my friends' lives.

I am an American Jew and aware of the sensitivities involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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.

The bones of the story of 'War Horse' is a love story. That's what makes it universal.

I love to go to a regular movie theater, especially when the movie is a big crowd-pleaser. It's much better watching a movie with 500 people making noise than with just a dozen.

Money to me is not a factor in my life.

My father had many, many veterans over to the house, and the older I got the more I appreciated their sacrifice.

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 dream for a living. Once a month the sky falls on my head, I come to, and I see another movie I want to make.

Social media has taken over in America to such an extreme that to get my own kids to look back a week in their history is a miracle, let alone 100 years.

I've discovered I've got this preoccupation with ordinary people pursued by large forces.

You can't start a movie by having the attitude that the script is finished, because if you think the script is finished, your movie is finished before the first day of shooting.

I think that a movie can only be an adjunct or only a supplement to books, to different points of view, to scholars, historians and your own teachers.

We all feel that if we have a crazy idea that might get laughed at, there's nothing wrong with seeing if there's a crazy writer out there who agrees with us and can take it to a crazy network and somehow bring something that's a little bit daft and edgy to life.

When I grow up, I still want to be a director.

Only a generation of readers will span a generation of writers.

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 think we need to take responsibility for the things we put on this planet, and also take responsibility for the things we take off the planet. We need to have limiters on how far we allow ourselves to go - ethical, moral limiters.

This whole thing about reality television to me is really indicative of America saying we're not satisfied just watching television, we want to star in our own TV shows. We want you to discover us and put us in your own TV show, and we want television to be about us, finally.

I missed my dad a lot growing up, even though we were together as a family. My dad was really a workaholic. And he was always working.

For one thing, I don't think that anybody in any war thinks of themselves as a hero.

When I felt like an outsider, movies made me feel inside my own skill set.

Making a movie and not directing the little moments is like drinking a soda and leaving the little slurp puddle for someone else.

I think Lincoln had a unique parenting style. He let his kids run free and wild.

My problem is that my imagination won't turn off. I wake up so excited I can't eat breakfast. I've never run out of energy. It's not like OPEC oil; I don't worry about a premium going on my energy. It's just always been there. I got it from my mom.

My filmmaking really began with technology. It began through technology, not through telling stories, because my 8mm movie camera was the way into whatever I decided to do.

Fathering is a major job, but I need both things in my life: my job to be a director, and my kids to direct me.

Why pay a dollar for a bookmark? Why not use the dollar for a bookmark?

One of the gratuities about being a director is that you can volunteer yourself out of difficult details.

I think in terms of chapters. Every time I finish a movie, it's a chapter. When one of my kids graduates from school, that's a chapter.

Audience members are only concerned about the story, the concept, the bells and whistles and the noise that a popular film starts to make even before it's popular. So audiences will not be drawn to the technology; they'll be drawn to the story. And I hope it always remains that way.

I always think if it's a good story, the audience can't wait to run out of the theater and go tweet somebody with the gist of a story, in a nutshell, almost, because it was that interesting.

I was a scared kid... I think I was born a nervous wreck, and I think movies were one way to find a way transferring my own private horrors to everyone else's lives. It was less of an escape and more of an exorcism.

The baby boomers owe a big debt of gratitude to the parents and grandparents - who we haven't given enough credit to anyway - for giving us another generation.

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.

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 love creating partnerships; I love not having to bear the entire burden of the creative storytelling, and when I have unions like with George Lucas and Peter Jackson, it's really great; not only do I benefit, but the project is better for it.

The public has an appetite for anything about imagination - anything that is as far away from reality as is creatively possible.

Every time I go to a movie, it's magic, no matter what the movie's about.

Cell phones tend to bring us more inside of our lives whereas movies offer a chance to escape, so there are two competing forces.

I love history, so I do a lot of movies about history.

I love my kids as individuals, not as a herd, and I do have a herd of children: I have seven kids.

I believe in 3D for certain kinds of films. I certainly believe in using 3D for all things in animation because animation has such clarity and so much depth of focus. It worked great with 'Avatar' because 70 percent of that film is animated.

You can't intellectually purge yourself of who you are. Whatever that is, it's going to come out in the wash, the film wash. What you are is going to be relevant, if not to yourself, to the movies you make.

Lincoln's leadership is based on a number of precepts, but my favorite one is that he acted in the name, and for the good, of the people.

Naturally, it is a terrible, despicable crime when, as in Munich, people are taken hostage, people are killed. But probing the motives of those responsible and showing that they are also individuals with families and have their own story does not excuse what they did.

Like, I took no poetic license with 'Schindler's List' because that was historical, factual documents.

I don't make unconventional stories; I don't make non-linear stories. I like linear storytelling a lot.

People often tell me how much they love the digital skies that we obviously painted for 'War Horse.' Well, there's not a single sky that we put in through special effects. The skies you see in the movie are the skies that we experienced - but it was definitely challenging at times.

Even if I'd had a really happy relationship with my father and there was no emotional hiatus for a decade and a half, I probably would still have made some of the same choices for movies that I've made.

I once said that CGI makes you less inventive. At the time I was bemoaning the loss of the practical stunt. If a stunt can be done practically and safely, I'd rather do it old-style.

I feel there is no substitute for going out to the movies. There is nothing like it.

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 the world ran the way a crew runs a set, we'd have a better, more progressive world.

From the day I started to think politically and to develop my own moral values, from my earliest youth, I have been an ardent defender of Israel.

There are so many rumours about so many of us in the public eye. Sometimes it's too hard to deny what is not true.

I like the smell of film. I just like knowing there's film going through the camera.

My head's not in the clouds, but I think I've gotten too much credit for being an astute businessman.

I just had a crazy, wild imagination all my life, and science fiction is the greatest outlet for me.

I've always been interested in how we survive and how resourceful we are as Americans.

I'm always in favor of Israel responding strongly when it's threatened.

In high school, I got smacked and kicked around. Two bloody noses. It was horrible.

My early exposure to all the leviathans of the Saturday matinee creature features inspired me, when I grew up, to make 'Jurassic Park.'

'The Color Purple' is the kind of character piece that a director like Sidney Lumet could do brilliantly with one hand tied behind his back.

And I may often question choices I make as a producer. But I've never questioned the choices I make as a director.

I have a choice - I can either watch all the dailies, or I can follow the social media. I can't do both.

I quit college so fast I didn't even clean out my locker.

It's still a mystery to me, but even though my mother was like an older sister to me, I kind of put her up on a pedestal.

My dad took me to my first movie. It was 'The Greatest Show on Earth' in 1952, a movie of such scale it was actually a traumatic experience.

My dad's been responsible for a lot of my issues.

So I try to re-invent my own eye every time I tackle a new subject. But it's hard, because everybody has style. You can't help it.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Jihadism have nothing to do with each other.

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

When I don't have a story to tell, I'm a terror to live with.

I committed to directing 'Catch Me If You Can' not because of the divorce component, but principally because Frank Abagnale did things that were the most astonishing scams I had ever heard.

I don't drink coffee. I've never had a cup of coffee in my entire life. That's something you probably don't know about me. I've hated the taste since I was a kid.

I had a great time creating the future on 'Minority Report,' and it's a future that is coming true faster than any of us thought it would.

I made 'Saving Private Ryan' for my father. He's the one who filled my head with war stories when I was growing up.