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

I get very, very anxious on the set. I have a thousand ideas and I don't censor myself. I wind up cutting some of them out in the editing room... I shoot [needless footage] and then don't use later on in the process.

Actors just need each other to act together.

You never really know how good of a leader you are until there is something there is lead us to, toward or through or to overcome.

I made 'Empire of the Sun' in Shanghai in the 1980s and want to come back one day to make a movie in China.

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.

I think one of the worst things that happened to me was, you know, my voluntary fallout with my father. And then the greatest thing that happened to me was when I saw the light, and realized I needed to love him in a way that he could love me back.