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.

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

I'd rather direct than produce. Any day. And twice on Sunday.

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

I simply adore 'The Simpsons.' I go to bed in a 'Simpsons' T-shirt.

I think every movie I've made after 'Indiana Jones,' I've tried to make every single movie as if it was made by a different director, because I'm very conscious of not wanting to impose a consistent style on subject matter that is not necessarily suited to that style. So I try to re-invent my own eye every time I tackle a new subject.

I'm always in favor of Israel responding strongly when it's threatened. At the same time, a response to a response doesn't really solve anything. It just creates a perpetual-motion machine.