Quotes by Steven Spielberg

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.

I dream for a living.

There is no such thing as science fiction, there is only science eventuality.

In '83, not only was there no such thing as performance motion capture technology, there was no such thing as digital animation. This was the analog era.

I think all directors should be animators.

I feel like Ive been engaged to the British Empire since 1980 and tonight you have given me the ring knighthood.

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.

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.

All I have to do is pose for a picture and I'm getting married to the person standing next to me.

I did not make this film about Frank Abagnale because of what he did . . but because of what he has done with his life the past 30 years.

Humans are the only hunters who kill when not hungry.

Failure is inevitable. Success is elusive.

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

Sadly, racial, ethnic, and cultural hatred and intolerance are not just history, they are current events.

It is not my job to compare my movies. I don't like to compare my films with other movies because I don't really have that perspective. It is an intellectual exercise, but it doesn't intuitively come to me.

I hate that people think it's wrong to say you're inspired by Jaws or by Raiders Of The Lost Ark. You're allowed to be.

Once scouting fully opens its doors to all who desire the same experience that so fully enriched me as a young person, I will be happy to reconsider a role on the advisory board.

I've been told that I'm a very different person on the set than I am in postproduction when the movie's over and I'm editing, in that I get so wound up in the film that I become selfless to the point where I lose too much weight.

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

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 later on in the process.

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

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.

My first reaction every time I delve into an episode of history that I don't know very much about is... my first reaction is anger that my teachers never taught me about it.

All good ideas start out as bad ideas, that's why it takes so long.

Godzilla was the most masterful of all dinosaur movies because it made you believe it was really happening.

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

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

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'll probably never win an Oscar, but I'll sure have a lot of fun! I really believe that movies are the great escape.

The most expensive habit in the world is celluloid, not heroin, and I need a fix every few years.

I have always admired him (Bergman), and I wish I could be an equally good filmmaker as he is, but it will never happen. His love for the cinema almost gives me a guilty conscience.

I'm 62 years old. Am I old enough to win a lifetime achievement award? Yes, I am. Thank you very much.

I had to get over my fear of running through the world naked and learn to say 'take me or leave me.'

I basically took something that was extremely erotic and very intentional, and I reduced it to a simple kiss. I got a lot of criticism for that.

All through my career I've done what I can to discover new talent and give them a start.

Oh, torture. Torture. My pubic hairs went gray.

I love Rambo but I think it's potentially a very dangerous movie. It changes history in a frightening way.

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 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.

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.

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.

The best time of my life has been the three instances where I have been there for the birth of my children. That is, nothing else has ever come close.

Unprotected sex just feels better in a Waffle House bathroom.

He never gave up. And he does that for us.

Wherever you are, I will find you and I will bring you home.

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.

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

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.

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.

The only movie that I would ever even consider retrofitting is the first 'Jurassic Park,' which I think would look pretty spectacular in 3D. That's the only one of my films that I would consider doing in 3D.

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.

The 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.

Akira Kurosawa is the pictorial William Shakespeare of our time.

I'm as guilty as anyone, because I helped to herald the digital era with Jurassic Park. But the danger is that it can be abused to the point where nothing is eye-popping any more.

Bloated budgets are ruining Hollywood -- these pictures are squeezing all the other types of movies out of Hollywood. It's disastrous.

People have forgotten how to tell a story.

I've been shooting movies and television shows for now 47 years and I've worked with the best of them and Kirk Douglas is the only movie star I ever met.

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 don't play online games. 'Warcraft,' I've played that, but I mainly play action games.

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.

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.

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.

It starts with the writer-it's a familiar dictum, but somehow it keeps getting forgotten along the way. No film-maker, irrespective of his electronic bag of tricks, can ever afford to forget his commitment to the written word.

The world would be a poorer place without Doctor Who.

Audrey gave more than she ever got. The whole world is going to miss her.

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.

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 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.

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

Sometimes a dream almost whispers, it never shouts. So you have to, every day of your lives, be ready to hear what whispers in your ear.

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

When I don't have a movie, I don't take a job just for the sake of working. I just sit it out until I find something I'm passionate 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 feel there is no substitute for going out to the movies. There is nothing like it.

The greatest films ever made in our history were cut on film, and I'm tenaciously hanging on to the process. I just love going into an editing room and smelling the photochemistry and seeing my editor wearing mini-strands of film around his neck.

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.

There's no better way to test a person than to put them in the middle of a war. That's clearly going to show what kind of a character you're telling a story about.

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

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