I've kept the people who've been in my career who I feel are my family. Kathy [Kennedy] had been with me since 1978. Janusz Kaminsky, my cinematographer, has made every movie with me since Schindler's List. Michael Kahn has cut every movie I've directed since 1976 when we made Close Encounters together. Rick Carter has done more than 15 of my directed films as a production designer.

There is something that you have that no one else ever had ... When you watch Kirk's [Douglas] performance in anything, in anything he's ever done, you cannot take your eyes off of him. It's not possible to look away from him.

Everybody who works for Amblin Television has to do five jobs.

When I was a kid, there was no collaboration; it's you with a camera bossing your friends around. But as an adult, filmmaking is all about appreciating the talents of the people you surround yourself with and knowing you could never have made any of these films by yourself.

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.

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

All of my movies are about how I wish the world would work. I've made very few movies about how the world worked. I could name them on one and a half hands, about how my movies have been very reflective of how the world was exactly. A lot of my movies are really about the way I wish the world was, and that's what this whole art form is all about. It's an interpretive art form.