I love creating partnerships; I love not having to bear the entire burden of the creative storytelling, and when I have unions like with George Lucas and Peter Jackson, it's really great; not only do I benefit, but the project is better for it.

I 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.

The turning point in my career was Jaws. It was a turning point because I was a director-for-hire before Jaws and because it was such a big hit I could do any movie I wanted and Hollywood just wrote me a cheque.

I 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.

I've discovered I've got this preoccupation with ordinary people pursued by large forces.

I've been told that I'm a very different person on the set than I am in postproduction when the movie's over and I'm editing, in that I get so wound up in the film that I become selfless to the point where I lose too much weight.

I feel like Ive been engaged to the British Empire since 1980 and tonight you have given me the ring knighthood.