Top 308 Quotes & Sayings by Steven Spielberg - Page 2

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.

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.

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 was making a lot of 8mm home movies, since I was twelve, making little dramas and comedies with the neighborhood kids.

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.

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.

The only thing that gets me back to directing is good scripts.

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 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.

Lincoln believed in the American people.

I've always been interested in UFOs.

When war comes, two things happen - profits go way, way up and all perishables go way, way down. There becomes a market for them.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

All presidents swear an oath to the Constitution to keep this country united, and when the country fell apart, Lincoln had to put it back together again, with a lot of help. But he bore total responsibility.

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.

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

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.

I'm not really interested in making money.

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 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.

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

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

A lot of the films I've made probably could have worked just as well 50 years ago, and that's just because I have a lot of old-fashion values.

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 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.

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

I don't really have a schedule of when I want to show my children my movies.

When my children were born, I made the choice I wanted them to be raised as Jews and to have a Jewish education.

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.

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

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 am a very impatient director.

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

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 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.

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

I simply adore 'The Simpsons.' I go to bed in a 'Simpsons' T-shirt.

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.

Most of my presumptions about a production are usually wrong.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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