Steven Spielberg Quotations | Page 2

The machinery of the democratic process is really no different today from what it was 150 years ago.

There's nothing self-serving about what motivated me to bring 'Schindler's List' to the screen.

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.

When I was very young, I remember my mother telling me about a friend of hers in Germany, a pianist who played a symphony that wasn't permitted, and the Germans came up on stage and broke every finger on her hands. I grew up with stories of Nazis breaking the fingers of Jews.

I guess my first digital movie was 'Tintin' because 'Tintin' has no film step. There is no intermediate film step. It's 100% digital animation, but as far as a live-action film, I'm still planning to shoot everything on film.

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.

Because television doesn't offer the kind of budget that a movie offers, you've got to be a little more careful where you spend the money to put the fiction in science.

I think producers are more interested in backing concepts than directors and writers. I don't think that's the right way of making a decision about whether you're going to back a film or not.

I'm always in favor of Israel responding strongly when it's threatened. At the same time, a response to a response doesn't really solve anything. It just creates a perpetual-motion machine.

I'm not in a race with anybody to make the biggest hit movie anymore. I am just trying to tell stories that I can stay interested in for the two years it takes me to supervise the writing and to direct them.

When I was younger, all I cared about was what people thought of me and my films. Now I care less about catering, hand-serving, hand-feeding the audience. I've gotten to the point now in my life where I'm serving myself.

Making a movie where the central character is a horse was a challenge. Because I'm scared of riding. I was thrown as a kid. One of my daughters is a competitive jumper, we live with horses, we have stables on our property. But I don't ride. I observe, and I worry.

My intention was never to replace the original film. When people buy 'E.T.' I want them to know they have the original movie, not just for collectors and aficionados, but for everybody who remembers it and wants to continue remembering it just that way.

My film refuses to be a pamphlet. My screenwriter, Tony Kushner, and I were hoping to make it a visceral, emotional and intellectual experience, combined in such a way that it will help you get in touch with what you feel are the questions the film poses. The most important thing about peace in the Middle East is that people surrender their absolute certainty about what's going on.

Now, with the response to 'Saving Private Ryan,' generations are coming together to understand how fortunate we are today to live in a free world because of what you and the millions of other veterans did for us.

I was saddened that after long negotiations and many compromises we were unable to come to terms with Universal's parent company, GE.

I hate to ask you, but would you read this and tell if you'd be interested?

I felt, for the first time in my career, that I was directing a stage production more than a motion picture. Part of directing is psychotherapy. You're sitting there with a lot of very talented patients, and you're hoping your movie doesn't blow up in your face in anarchy.

I expected to see a party animal who was going to reap harvest with all the girls on the set. I found the opposite. Leo is a homebody.

Whatever he wants to do. That's how I feel about it.

I think you'll understand the way we feel about it the night of the Academy Awards. I think when Mr. Kazan walks out to accept his award, I think you'll feel from a lot of people in the Academy good support for his work. The body of his work has been a great influence upon me and all of my peers.

I will never make a movie about any of the events of 9/11.

Our hope is that the archive will be a resource so enduring that 10, or 50, or even 100 years from now, people around the world will learn directly from survivors and witnesses about the atrocities of the Holocaust.

We don't demonize our targets. They're individuals. They have families. Although what happened in Munich, I condemn.

I dream for a living.

was looking forward to working closely with the team in Los Angeles.

There are three movies that I am exceptionally proud of in my life, ... and I rarely commit to a list of films that I like, that I've made -- but these are the three films that I was passionately connected to -- the first was 'ET,' the second 'Schindler's List,' and third is 'Saving Private Ryan.'

to help address the immediate and long term needs resulting from Hurricane Katrina.

Through the visual arts, the performing arts, the art of music, the art of dance, the art of celebration of life, all of us are dedicated to making this Olympic opening and closing ceremonies the most emotional everyone has ever seen.

This opportunity ... allows all of us to reach out directly to open a much wider door.

'E.T.' began with me trying to write a story about my parents' divorce.

It would make people more comfortable if I made a film that said all targeted assassination is bad, or good, but the movie doesn't take either of those positions. It refuses to. Many of those pundits on the Left and Right would love the film to land somewhere definite. It puts a real burden on the audience to figure out for themselves how they feel about these issues. There are no easy answers to the most complex story of the last 50 years.

This is a courageous year for filmmakers. ... They are saying 'If I never make another film, this one says what I think and feel.

There was not a single point when we thought it would come together as it did. But after '(Saving) Private Ryan,' we just wanted to get back into combat.

All of us know that the survivors and witnesses have given us a precious gift whose wise use will build a better world for this and future generations.

It's great being honored by critic organizations, because so often they dishonor you with bad reviews. So this is a wonderful change.

Dakota Fanning was on my mind the second I decided to make 'War of the Worlds,' ... I know no one her age that's better than she is and more intuitive about human nature. She has a very wise old soul - it's like she's been around about seven or eight times.

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

I'm very used to working with first time actors - you can just look back at 'E.T.' with Drew Barrymore, and Christian Bale from 'Empire of the Sun,' who'd never made a movie before.

I personally feel this embargo should be lifted, ... I don't see any reason for its existence beyond grudges carrying into the 21st century.

INTO THE WEST takes place during one of the single most dramatic periods in American history. We're painting this on a huge canvas in order to tell a story that explores the Gold Rush, the transcontinental railroad, the wild west and the Indian wars leading to the tragedy at Wounded Knee. These are all facets of the American and Native American experience. It's the story about opportunity and the clash of cultures and the eventual overwhelming of one nation's way of life over another.

If he picks the right roles and doesn't forget the theater, I think he can eventually be Alec Guinness or Laurence Olivier.

I don't think this collection of films represent everything. We're not delivering a shared point of view. These movies are all so different from each other. We all look at a movie through a prism of everything our parents and teachers taught us and what our children are telling us. You can't make a movie expecting everyone will have the same reaction. Ten people seeing 'Munich' will come out with 10 different points of view. It was always that way, sitting around the Passover table talking about the Middle East.

A lot of kids only know 'E.T.' from the digitally-enhanced version.

The last few years in scouting have deeply saddened me to see the Boy Scouts of America actively and publicly participating in discrimination. It's a real shame.

I think the greatest thing about DVD is the quality of sound and picture; the real estate to put more extras on; and, my favorite point is it stores quietly in very subtle places in your home .

I get very, very anxious on the set. I have a thousand ideas and I don't censor myself. I wind up cutting some of them out in the editing room. I shoot needless footage and then don't use it later on in the process.

I've got a lot of examples about moments where I thought something would work on film and it didn't work, but I never came to that decision with the film half shot, where I was stuck on a runaway train and couldn't jump off. On those occasions where I have admitted defeat, that this is not going to work, I haven't embarked on that project and made that movie.

I don't do the running commentary as the movie's playing. I think you should be able to watch the movie without listening to me talk while the movies playing.

I like that the best about DVD: how small it is.

Whatever affect any of my films have on audiences, I just kind of stop at the door. I make them and I just don't go outside after they're over.

All of my movies are about how I wish the world would work. I've made very few movies about how the world worked. I could name them on one and a half hands, about how my movies have been very reflective of how the world was exactly. A lot of my movies are really about the way I wish the world was, and that's what this whole art form is all about. It's an interpretive art form.

History is so fleeting and we are so busy consuming media and the contemporary culture, voraciously gobbling it up, that we have no room to look back ever, and our young people have a tough time looking back.

The costume the actors wear and if they're in stylized makeup and wigs in a live-action movie let's say, in a big costume drama, even though it does give them a sense of great ambience and environment and they kind of feel like they're in a great court, or if they feel like they're in the old west, or if they feel like they're being chased by hobbits or dinosaurs, it all comes down to the actors looking each other in the eye.

Every movie you're going to forget that it's 3D whether it's widescreen or whatever it is, you're going to forget everything if the movie is working. If the movie doesn't work or if the movie generically doesn't work then immediately you start to pick apart whatever has contributed to that.

Some movies I make for myself. I just sort of make them for myself. I do that sometimes when the subject matter is very sensitive and very personal and I really can't imagine I'm an audience.

I'm certainly hoping that 3D gets to the point where people do not notice it because once they stop noticing it, it just becomes another tool and an aid to help tell a story.

Not every movie, in my opinion, should be in 3D. There are a lot of stories I wouldn't shoot in 3D. But, you know, there are movies that are perfect in 3D.

Movies principally require the best of everybody, all at the same time, being the best they can be. Not just like five people being the best they've ever been, and 10 people not being the best they could be. It's like if everybody is either doing their greatest work, or the whole house of cards falls apart.

3D needs a trained eye. It can't be done by everybody. People who just do 3D just for the sake of commercializing their movie another five or six percent and they don't know really how to do it, they should care how to do it better by bringing other directors and collaborators into their lives to help teach and instruct how you really make a 3D movie because it's not just like putting a new lens on a camera and forgetting it. It takes a lot of very careful consideration. It will change your approach to where you put the cameras. So, 3D isn't for everybody.

I love history. It was the only thing I did well at in school. I'm not ashamed to admit that I was not a good student but I was great at history.

I was fifteen, or sixteen. I was in high school. I was spending a summer in California with my second cousins. And I wanted to be a director really bad. I was making a lot of 8mm home movies, since I was twelve, making little dramas and comedies with the neighborhood kids.

I don't go through a torturous intellectual process to decide what to direct. I know what I want to direct the second I read something or hear a story. I just know when it grabs me in a certain way I want to direct it. And then I spend the next four to six months trying to talk myself out of it, because directing is really hard! But it's true, I know essentially when and what I want to do next... it's an undeniable feeling I get and it's not the same feeling I get when I wind up producing something.

I think that the perceived downs in my own career come from just managing my time and not feeling that I have enough time for my family or my friends. You could put that in the personal life category but it's all one category because I've got to balance my family.

I really trust the authenticity of real people and my job is to get them to be themselves in front of the camera. Often what happens is, you'll get a newcomer in front of the camera and they'll freeze up or they imitate actors or other performances that they've admired and so they stop becoming themselves. And so my job as the director is just to always return them to what I first saw in them, which was simply an uncensored human being.

The turning point in my career was Jaws. It was a turning point because I was a director-for-hire before Jaws and because it was such a big hit I could do any movie I wanted and Hollywood just wrote me a cheque.

I don't want to quit. I've always said that Clint Eastwood is one of my best friends. I've known Clint for many years and we have almost a jokey relationship about retirement. I always say: "OK Clint, are you ready to retire this year?" And he always says: "No, are you?" So, I'm waiting for the phone call where Clint says he's hanging up his spurs. That's never going to happen. If it doesn't happen for Clint, it won't happen for me.

The creative process is a very collaborative process. I know it might seem that way because so much ink is spilled and the media is obsessed with business and numbers and studios... but filmmakers don't think of it that way. We just go off and we tell our stories. It's the same torture that we adore, it's the same torture that our forefathers endured making movies in the golden era of Hollywood. So, from my perspective it's no different, I'm sure, from the men and women who I admire so much who made the earliest movies.

I've kept the people who've been in my career who I feel are my family. Kathy [Kennedy] had been with me since 1978. Janusz Kaminsky, my cinematographer, has made every movie with me since Schindler's List. Michael Kahn has cut every movie I've directed since 1976 when we made Close Encounters together. Rick Carter has done more than 15 of my directed films as a production designer.

3D is not a fire and forget tool. It takes a lot of very careful consideration and it will change your approach to where you put the camera so 3D isn't for everybody.

I would lose myself too much if I thought of myself as the audience.

Desperate times require desperate measures. What Lincoln and the Lobbyist for the Amendment and the Manager of the Amendment and himself, what they did to get this passed was not illegal. It was murky, but what they did was noble and grand. How they went about it was somewhat murky, but nothing they did was really illegal.

You never really know how good of a leader you are until there is something there is lead us to, toward or through or to overcome.

It [Lincoln movie] had nothing to do with politics. It had nothing to do with holding a mirror up to the way we conduct our business on Capitol Hill. This was meant to be a story, a Lincoln portrait if you will. I think any time is the right time for a very compelling story, any time.

There's been more written about Lincoln than movies made about him or television portraying him. He's kind of a stranger to our industry, to this medium. You have to go back to the 1930s to find a movie that's just about Abraham Lincoln. I just found that my fascination with Lincoln, which started as a child, got to the point where after reading so much about him I thought there was a chance to tell a segment of his life to to moviegoers.

There's a lot of confusion about the political ideologies of both parties [Democrats and Republicans] have switched 180 degrees in 150 years. It just too confusing. Everybody claiming Lincoln as their own. And everybody should claim Lincoln as their own, because he represents all of us, and what he did basically provided the opportunities that all of us are enjoying today.

If the movie does well, or it doesn't do so well, some movies get great reviews, some movies don't... that's just part of what I do for a living. I just move through all that; that doesn't ever stop me.

An animal has no intellectual capacity to justify or to find reasons to exist. An animal just exists because it's the natural thing to do.

People can relate to horses. Horses, I think, are basically in our genetic history. Horses were part of our culture, part of our collective society, for hundreds of years, and so, the horse is one of the most familiar animals to people of any race or culture or country.

I've just always had a personal fascination with the myth of Abraham Lincoln. And once you start to read about him and the Civil War and everything leading up to the Civil War, you start to understand that the myth is created when we think we understand a character and we reduce him to a kind of cultural national stereotype.

It is important to know who your friends are and to stay, remain loyal to your friends, despite what you hear, despite the mistakes that are made in friendships and misunderstandings that commonly occur, to be able to forgive and to move on, you have to be able to remember the values of friendship.

I'm very collaborative with everybody on the set.

Actors just need each other to act together.

If movies generically don't work, you immediately start to pick apart what ingredients contributed to that. If any movie is working, hopefully how it was made will be the least of your concern. You'll only want to have a god time.

You can be great just by being yourself.

I did 50 takes on Robert Shaw assembling the Greener Gun on 'Jaws.' The shark wasn't working, so I just kept shooting to make the production report look like we were accomplishing something and to keep cast and crew from going crazy from boredom. It was a strategic indulgence.

I just think that the qualities of leadership are unknown even to the leader until he's tested and given a challenge.

I think the secret of great acting is that you have to bring your imagination to the party. You have to have a great imagination and you have to bring it every day when you're working. Your imagination and your skills as an actor are what see you through, not what you're wearing or where you are.

I compose the frame literally with the camera. Unless it makes a story point.

I think that is the secret of great acting. You have to bring your imagination to the party. You've got to have a great imagination.

I make some movies for myself. I do that sometimes when the subject matter is very sensitive and very personal and I really can't imagine that I'm an audience member. I would lose myself too much if I thought of myself as the audience. There are other types of genre films that I need to be able to direct from the audience, to be right next to you watching the picture being made.

People have forgotten how to tell a story.

All those horrible, traumatic years I spent as a kid became what I draw from creatively today.

I was afraid of small spaces and I was afraid of the tree outside my window, and I had all these phobias. I think many kids have those phobias, but I probably had more than most.

I think every film I make that puts characters in jeopardy is me purging my own fears, sadly only to re-engage with them shortly after the release of the picture. I'll never make enough films to purge them all.

I still have pretty much the same fears I had as a kid. I'm not sure I'd want to give them up; a lot of these insecurities fuel the movies I make.

Movies become living organisms that graduate from a filmmaker's sphere of influence and pretty much look back and tell you how they need to be said goodbye to. A movie often turns around and looks at you and says, "Here is who I am, and that's maybe now how you see me, but that's who I've become." And you've got to be open enough to go with that.

Everybody loves a winner, but nobody loves a winner.

I've always sort of time-locked and mind-blocked myself in my 30s, and that's always the age I feel.

I felt like an alien. I always felt like I never belonged to any group that I wanted to belong to.