Sometimes people are surprised to learn that most of the films I've made don't work. They've been released but nobody has ever seen them. Maybe 40 percent of them are very successful. That's a very high percentage; most people have maybe 10 or 15 percent of their films work.

Success is when you try to achieve your inward vision externally and have it come off the way you see it. Then YOU feel successful about it; that's how success is measured.

Learning to make films is very easy. Learning what to make films about is very hard. What you’ve really got to do is focus on learning as much about life, and about various aspects of it first.

From the outset, I conceived Star Wars as a series of six films, or two trilogies.

No! Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try.

A special effect is a tool, a means of telling a story. A special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing.

I was going to go to a four-year college and be an anthropologist or to an art school and be an illustrator when a friend convinced me to learn photography at the University of Southern California. Little did I know it was a school that taught you how to make movies! It had never occurred to me that I'd ever have any interest in filmmaking.