My head's not in the clouds, but I think I've gotten too much credit for being an astute businessman.
Steven SpielbergI don't really distinguish between a fictional hero and a real life hero as a basis for any comparison. To me, a hero is a hero. I like making pictures about people who have a personal mission in life or at least in the life of a story who start out with certain low expectations and then over achieve our highest expectations for them. That's the kind of character arc I love dabbling in as a director, as a filmmaker.
Steven SpielbergI'm 62 years old. Am I old enough to win a lifetime achievement award? Yes, I am. Thank you very much.
Steven SpielbergWith 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.
Steven SpielbergYou have many years ahead of you to create the dreams that we can't even imagine dreaming. You have done more for the collective unconscious of this planet than you will ever know.
Steven SpielbergThe 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.
Steven SpielbergI 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.
Steven SpielbergFathering is a major job, but I need both things in my life: my job to be a director, and my kids to direct me.
Steven SpielbergAfter a scary movie about the world almost ending, we can walk into the sunlight and say, "Wow, everything's still here. I'm OK!" We like to tease ourselves. Human beings have a need to get close to the edge, and when filmmakers or writers can take them to the edge, it feels like a dream where you're falling, but you wake up just before you hit the ground.
Steven SpielbergI 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
Steven SpielbergI turned down 'Harry Potter' and 'Spider-Man,' two movies that I knew would be phenomenally successful, because I had already made movies like that before and they offered no challenge to me. I don't need my ego to be reminded.
Steven SpielbergThere are so many rumours about so many of us in the public eye. Sometimes it's too hard to deny what is not true.
Steven SpielbergMy early exposure to all the leviathans of the Saturday matinee creature features inspired me, when I grew up, to make 'Jurassic Park.'
Steven SpielbergSome 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.
Steven SpielbergI 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.
Steven SpielbergBefore statehood was achieved, Syria and Egypt had their tanks and military equipment lined up to invade Tel Aviv and destroy it; but the Israelis scrambled together an air force, some of it from old Second World War Messerschmidts, and the invasion was halted.
Steven SpielbergI think the greatest thing about DVD is the quality of sound and picture; the real estate to put more extras on; and, my favorite point is it stores quietly in very subtle places in your home .
Steven SpielbergIn '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.
Steven SpielbergThe 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.
Steven Spielberg3D needs a trained eye. It can't be done by everybody. People who just do 3D just for the sake of commercializing their movie another five or six percent and they don't know really how to do it, they should care how to do it better by bringing other directors and collaborators into their lives to help teach and instruct how you really make a 3D movie because it's not just like putting a new lens on a camera and forgetting it. It takes a lot of very careful consideration. It will change your approach to where you put the cameras. So, 3D isn't for everybody.
Steven SpielbergThere's no other way to learn about it, except through documentaries. I encourage documentarians to continue telling stories about World War II. I think documentaries are the greatest way to educate an entire generation that doesn't often look back to learn anything about the history that provided a safe haven for so many of us today. Documentaries are the first line of education, and the second line of education is dramatization, such as The Pacific.
Steven SpielbergMy dad took me out to see a meteor shower when I was a little kid, and it was scary for me because he woke me up in the middle of the night. My heart was beating; I didn't know what he wanted to do. He wouldn't tell me, and he put me in the car and we went off, and I saw all these people lying on blankets, looking up at the sky.
Steven SpielbergI dream for a living. Once a month the sky falls on my head, I come to, and I see another movie I want to make.
Steven SpielbergI usually do about five cuts as a director. I haven't ever directed a film where I haven't made five passes through the movie, and that takes a long time.
Steven SpielbergIn high school, I got smacked and kicked around. Two bloody noses. It was horrible.
Steven SpielbergI had to get over my fear of running through the world naked and learn to say 'take me or leave me.'
Steven SpielbergTracking 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.
Steven SpielbergI 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.
Steven SpielbergI've learned there are a lot of people that don't want to believe the Holocaust ever happened because it doesn't fit their other beliefs and so they deny it and it makes them sleep better at night to do so. But it makes the Holocaust survivors sleep better at night to know that we've given them a voice.
Steven SpielbergI felt like an alien. I always felt like I never belonged to any group that I wanted to belong to.
Steven SpielbergThere'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.
Steven SpielbergThe most amazing thing for me is that every single person who sees a movie, not necessarily one of my movies, brings a whole set of unique experiences. Now, through careful manipulation and good storytelling, you can get everybody to clap at the same time, to hopefully laugh at the same time, and to be afraid at the same time.
Steven SpielbergThe machinery of the democratic process is really no different today from what it was 150 years ago.
Steven Spielberg