Steven Spielberg quotes

All of us every single year, we're a different person. I don't think we're the same person all our lives.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Inspirational #Motivational #Happy

I always like to play with my kids. I always have the time to do that. That's my priority, always has been, so just interacting with my kids, and being with them is great.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Kids #Play #Priorities

Every time I go to a movie, it's magic, no matter what the movie's about.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Magic #Matter

I've just always had a personal fascination with the myth of Abraham Lincoln. And once you start to read about him and the Civil War and everything leading up to the Civil War, you start to understand that the myth is created when we think we understand a character and we reduce him to a kind of cultural national stereotype.
-- Steven Spielberg

#War #Character #Thinking

Tracking 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 Spielberg

#Real #Cutting #Choices

There's been more written about Lincoln than movies made about him or television portraying him. He's kind of a stranger to our industry, to this medium. You have to go back to the 1930s to find a movie that's just about Abraham Lincoln. I just found that my fascination with Lincoln, which started as a child, got to the point where after reading so much about him I thought there was a chance to tell a segment of his life to to moviegoers.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Children #Reading #Television

You 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 Spielberg

#Dream #Years #Done

It [Lincoln movie] had nothing to do with politics. It had nothing to do with holding a mirror up to the way we conduct our business on Capitol Hill. This was meant to be a story, a Lincoln portrait if you will. I think any time is the right time for a very compelling story, any time.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Thinking #Mirrors #Stories

I dream for a living.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Dream #Self Love #Ironic

Desperate times require desperate measures. What Lincoln and the Lobbyist for the Amendment and the Manager of the Amendment and himself, what they did to get this passed was not illegal. It was murky, but what they did was noble and grand. How they went about it was somewhat murky, but nothing they did was really illegal.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Noble #Lobbyists #Desperate

Audience members are only concerned about the story, the concept, the bells and whistles and the noise that a popular film starts to make even before it's popular. So audiences will not be drawn to the technology; they'll be drawn to the story. And I hope it always remains that way.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Technology #Bells #Noise

There's a lot of confusion about the political ideologies of both parties [Democrats and Republicans] have switched 180 degrees in 150 years. It just too confusing. Everybody claiming Lincoln as their own. And everybody should claim Lincoln as their own, because he represents all of us, and what he did basically provided the opportunities that all of us are enjoying today.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Party #Opportunity #Years

I never felt comfortable with myself, because I was never part of the majority. I always felt awkward and shy and on the outside of the momentum of my friends' lives.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Awkward #Momentum #Majority

An animal has no intellectual capacity to justify or to find reasons to exist. An animal just exists because it's the natural thing to do.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Animal #Intellectual #Reason

I wanted to do another movie that could make us laugh and cry and feel good about the world. I wanted to do something else that could make us smile. This is a time when we need to smile more and Hollywood movies are supposed to do that for people in difficult times.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Movie #Smile #Laughing

People can relate to horses. Horses, I think, are basically in our genetic history. Horses were part of our culture, part of our collective society, for hundreds of years, and so, the horse is one of the most familiar animals to people of any race or culture or country.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Country #Horse #Thinking

This is a time when we need to smile more and Hollywood movies are supposed to do that for people in difficult times...
-- Steven Spielberg

#People #Needs #Hollywood

History is so fleeting and we are so busy consuming media and the contemporary culture, voraciously gobbling it up, that we have no room to look back ever, and our young people have a tough time looking back.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Media #People #Tough Times

Why pay a dollar for a bookmark? Why not use the dollar for a bookmark?
-- Steven Spielberg

#Funny #Movie #Inspiring

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.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Art #Hands #Names

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

#People #Ordinary #Force

I just think that the qualities of leadership are unknown even to the leader until he's tested and given a challenge.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Thinking #Leader #Challenges

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

#Bed #T Shirt #Shirts

I think in terms of chapters. Every time I finish a movie, it's a chapter. When one of my kids graduates from school, that's a chapter.
-- Steven Spielberg

#School #Kids #Thinking

People have forgotten how to tell a story. Stories don't have a middle or an end any more. They usually have a beginning that never stops beginning.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Movie #Inspiring #Positivity

Casting sometimes is fate and destiny more than skill and talent, from a director's point of view.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Fate #Destiny #Views

I've got a lot of examples about moments where I thought something would work on film and it didn't work, but I never came to that decision with the film half shot, where I was stuck on a runaway train and couldn't jump off. On those occasions where I have admitted defeat, that this is not going to work, I haven't embarked on that project and made that movie.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Decision #Half #Example

I don't think any movie or any book or any work of art can solve the stalemate in the Middle East today. But it's certainly worth a try.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Art #Book #Thinking

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 it later on in the process.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Cutting #Wind #Ideas

When I grow up, I still want to be a director.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Growing Up #Want #Directors

I don't do the running commentary as the movie's playing. I think you should be able to watch the movie without listening to me talk while the movies playing.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Running #Thinking #Listening

Fathering 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 Spielberg

#Jobs #Kids #Needs

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.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Leader #Overcoming

As a Jew I am aware of how important the existence of Israel is for the survival of us all. And because I am proud of being Jewish, I am worried by the growing anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in the world.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Israel #Survival #Important

I was fifteen, or sixteen. I was in high school. I was spending a summer in California with my second cousins. And I wanted to be a director really bad. I was making a lot of 8mm home movies, since I was twelve, making little dramas and comedies with the neighborhood kids.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Summer #Cousin #Drama

The world would be a poorer place without Doctor Who.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Doctors #World #Would Be

I think the secret of great acting is that you have to bring your imagination to the party. You have to have a great imagination and you have to bring it every day when you're working. Your imagination and your skills as an actor are what see you through, not what you're wearing or where you are.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Party #Thinking #Skills

I don't dream at night, I dream at day, I dream all day; I'm dreaming for living.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Dream #Night

I basically went into business for myself. But it never amounted to anything. I learned a lot about editing and dubbing by watching all the professionals do it, but I never got a job out of my imposition.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Jobs #Editing

I always like to think of the audience when I am directing. Because I am the audience.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Thinking #Audience

I make some movies for myself. I do that sometimes when the subject matter is very sensitive and very personal and I really can't imagine that I'm an audience member. I would lose myself too much if I thought of myself as the audience. There are other types of genre films that I need to be able to direct from the audience, to be right next to you watching the picture being made.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Matter #Able #Too Much

Only a generation of readers will span a generation of writers.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Generations #Reader

I'm very collaborative with everybody on the set.
-- Steven Spielberg

I get that same queasy, nervous, thrilling feeling every time I go to work. That's never worn off since I was 12 years-old with my dad's 8-millimeter movie camera.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Dad #Years #Feelings

I compose the frame literally with the camera. Unless it makes a story point.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Cameras #Stories

If I weren't a director, I would want to be a film composer.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Want #Directors #Film

I 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 Spielberg

#Real #Home #Thinking

I'm always in favor of Israel responding strongly when it's threatened.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Israel #Favors #Responding

I like that the best about DVD: how small it is.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Dvds

I go out and look for a good story to tell and if I like it enough and I decide to direct it, I become dangerously involved in becoming a part of that story.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Becoming #Looks #Stories

I have never before, in my long and eclectic career, been gifted with such an abundance of natural beauty as I experienced filming 'War Horse' on Dartmoor.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Horse #War #Careers

The essence of what it is to be American is the deep moral urge to be free, to freely express yourself and have the right to do so, and to look at all people as equals.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Essence #People #Looks

I believe in 3D for certain kinds of films. I certainly believe in using 3D for all things in animation because animation has such clarity and so much depth of focus. It worked great with 'Avatar' because 70 percent of that film is animated.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Believe #Focus #Depth

My father had many, many veterans over to the house, and the older I got the more I appreciated their sacrifice.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Veterans Day #Father #Sacrifice

I love editing. It's one of my favorite parts about filmmaking.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Editing #My Favorite #Filmmaking

My 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 Spielberg

#Dad #Lying #Kids

Am I allowed to say I really wanted this? This is fantastic.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Oscars #Fantastic #Wanted

Steve Jobs was the greatest inventor since Thomas Edison. He put the world at our fingertips.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Jobs #World #Fingertips

There is a fine line between censorship and good taste and moral responsibility.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Responsibility #Lines #Taste

The delicate balance of mentoring someone is not creating them in your own image, but giving them the opportunity to create themselves.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Opportunity #Creating #Giving

Before I go off and direct a movie, I always look at four films. They tend to be The Seven Samurai, Lawrence Of Arabia, It's A Wonderful Life and The Searchers.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Looks #Four #Samurai

I like the smell of film. I just like knowing there's film going through the camera.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Smell #Knowing #Cameras

The public has an appetite for anything about imagination - anything that is as far away from reality as is creatively possible.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Reality #Imagination #Far Away

Well, luckily with animation, fantasy is your friend.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Fantasy #Animation #Wells

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

#Giving #Stories #Directors

And I may often question choices I make as a producer. But I've never questioned the choices I make as a director.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Choices #May #Directors

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

#Sunday #Produce #Direct

My movies more often are told through pictures, not words. But in this case, the pictures took second position to the incredible words of Abraham Lincoln and his presence [...] I was less interested in an outpouring of imagery than in letting the most human moment of this story evolve before us.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Stories #Incredibles #Moments

From the day I started to think politically and to develop my own moral values, from my earliest youth, I have been an ardent defender of Israel.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Thinking #Israel #Moral

I am a very impatient director.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Directors #Impatient

You shouldn't dream your film, you should make it!
-- Steven Spielberg

#Dream #Film #Should

In the re-creation of combat situations, and this is coming from a director who's never been in one, being mindful of what these veterans have actually gone through, you find that the biggest concern is that you don't look at war as a geopolitical endeavor.
-- Steven Spielberg

#War #Looks #Gone

When war comes, two things happen - profits go way, way up and all perishables go way, way down. There becomes a market for them.
-- Steven Spielberg

#War #Two #Way

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.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Creating #Creative #Benefits

I love to go to a regular movie theater, especially when the movie is a big crowd-pleaser. It's much better watching a movie with 500 people making noise than with just a dozen.
-- Steven Spielberg

#People #Crowds #Dozen

When I don't have a story to tell, I'm a terror to live with.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Stories #Terror

I once said that CGI makes you less inventive. At the time I was bemoaning the loss of the practical stunt. If a stunt can be done practically and safely, I'd rather do it old-style.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Loss #Style #Done

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.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Thinking #Safe Haven #Generations

I even get inspired by movies that aren't very good, because there's always something good in movies that are collectively thought of as a failure. There's good in everything, I find.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Inspired #Very Good

I don't think that anybody in any war thinks of themselves as a hero. The minute anybody presumes that they are heroes, they get their boots taken away from them and buried in the sand.
-- Steven Spielberg

#War #Taken #Hero

Technology can be our best friend, and technology can also be the biggest party pooper of our lives. It interrupts our own story, interrupts our ability to have a thought or a daydream, to imagine something wonderful, because we're too busy bridging the walk from the cafeteria back to the office on the cell phone.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Party #Technology #Phones

I always think if it's a good story, the audience can't wait to run out of the theater and go tweet somebody with the gist of a story, in a nutshell, almost, because it was that interesting.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Running #Thinking #Interesting

Even if I'd had a really happy relationship with my father and there was no emotional hiatus for a decade and a half, I probably would still have made some of the same choices for movies that I've made.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Father #Emotional #Choices

Before 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 Spielberg

#War #Military #Air

I interviewed survivors, I went to Poland, saw the cities and spent time with the people and spoke to the Jews who had come back to Poland after the war and talked about why they had come back.
-- Steven Spielberg

#War #Cities #People

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.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Father #Thinking #Light

I committed to directing 'Catch Me If You Can' not because of the divorce component, but principally because Frank Abagnale did things that were the most astonishing scams I had ever heard.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Divorce #Scams #Committed

When I don't have a movie, I don't take a job just for the sake of working. I just sit it out until I find something I'm passionate about.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Jobs #Sake #Passionate

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.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Eye #Thinking #Style

My filmmaking really began with technology. It began through technology, not through telling stories, because my 8mm movie camera was the way into whatever I decided to do.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Technology #Way #Telling Stories

My first reaction every time I delve into an episode of history that I don't know very much about is... my first reaction is anger that my teachers never taught me about it.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Teacher #Firsts #Taught

My problem is that my imagination won't turn off. I wake up so excited I can't eat breakfast. I've never run out of energy. It's not like OPEC oil; I don't worry about a premium going on my energy. It's just always been there. I got it from my mom.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Mom #Running #Oil

Naturally, it is a terrible, despicable crime when, as in Munich, people are taken hostage, people are killed. But probing the motives of those responsible and showing that they are also individuals with families and have their own story does not excuse what they did.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Taken #People #Doe

People often tell me how much they love the digital skies that we obviously painted for 'War Horse.' Well, there's not a single sky that we put in through special effects. The skies you see in the movie are the skies that we experienced - but it was definitely challenging at times.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Horse #War #Sky

I think that the Internet is going to effect the most profound change on the entertainment industries combined. And we're all gonna be tuning into the most popular Internet show in the world, which will be coming from some place in Des Moines. We're all gonna lose our jobs. We're all gonna be on the Internet trying to find an audience.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Jobs #Thinking #Profound

I felt like an alien. I always felt like I never belonged to any group that I wanted to belong to.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Groups #Aliens #Wanted

Movies are always in a state of locomotion. You start with a general idea of how it should feel and then you find you've got a runaway train. You have to race to catch up: the movie is telling you what it wants to become, and when that happens there's no greater feeling.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Ideas #Race #Feelings

I can't describe it, what I'm feeling and what I'm thinking. This means something. This is important.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Mean #Thoughtful #Thinking

I've always been very hopeful which I guess isn't strange coming from me. I don't want to call myself an optimist. I want to say that I've always been full of hope. I've never lost that. I have a lot of hope for this country and for the entire world. . .
-- Steven Spielberg

#Country #Hopeful #World

It is not my job to compare my movies. I don't like to compare my films with other movies because I don't really have that perspective. It is an intellectual exercise, but it doesn't intuitively come to me.
-- Steven Spielberg

#Jobs #Exercise #Perspective