I'm here, and every day now is an extra day. I've been given an extra day so I've got to make the most of it.

There's nothing worse than the frustration of having somebody who you feel doesn't get what you're doing, trying to turn it into something else. It's a very, very annoying and sort of frustrating thing and I just never wanted to go through it. I was very fortunate as I came up through the film business that I was able to insulate myself from that.

Follow your bliss. Do the thing where you sit down at 8 a.m. and then you realize you're hungry and you look up and it's 10 p.m. If you can find something you love that much, it doesn't matter what you do.

If the boy and girl walk off into the sunset hand-in-hand in the last scene, it adds 10 million to the box office.

You really have to focus on what you're doing and just plow ahead no matter what hurdles are thrown in front of you.

You can't do it unless you can imagine it.

I think one of the reasons that Steven (Spielberg) and I have been as successful as we have is because we like the movies. We like to go to the movies. We enjoy movies and we want to make movies like the ones we enjoy.