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

I dream for a living.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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 think all directors should be animators.