Only a generation of readers will spawn a generation of writers.

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.

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

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

I think the key divide between the interactive media and the narrative media is the difficulty in opening up an empathic pathway between the gamer and the character, as differentiated from the audience and the characters in a movie or a television show.

I had a great time creating the future on 'Minority Report,' and it's a future that is coming true faster than any of us thought it would.

Even though I get older, what I do never gets old, and that's what I think keeps me hungry.

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.

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

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.

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

Remember, science fiction's always been the kind of first level alert to think about things to come. It's easier for an audience to take warnings from sci-fi without feeling that we're preaching to them. Every science fiction movie I have ever seen, any one that's worth its weight in celluloid, warns us about things that ultimately come true.

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.

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.

The Internet has been this miraculous conduit to the undeniable truth to the Holocaust.

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.

I've always been interested in how we survive and how resourceful we are as Americans.

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 love editing. It's one of my favorite parts about filmmaking.

I am an American Jew and aware of the sensitivities involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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.

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.

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

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

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

There is something about killing people at close range that is excruciating. It's bound to try a man's soul.

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.

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.

I don't drink coffee. I've never had a cup of coffee in my entire life. That's something you probably don't know about me. I've hated the taste since I was a kid.

Whether in success or in failure, I'm proud of every single movie I've ever directed.

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.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Jihadism have nothing to do with each other.

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.

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.

It all starts with the script: it's not worth taking myself away from my family if I don't have something I'm really passionate about.

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.

Documentaries are the first line of education, and the second line of education is dramatization, such as 'The Pacific'.

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

Well, luckily with animation, fantasy is your friend.

There's nothing self-serving about what motivated me to bring 'Schindler's List' to the screen.

When I was very young, I remember my mother telling me about a friend of hers in Germany, a pianist who played a symphony that wasn't permitted, and the Germans came up on stage and broke every finger on her hands. I grew up with stories of Nazis breaking the fingers of Jews.

When I felt like an outsider, movies made me feel inside my own skill set.

I missed my dad a lot growing up, even though we were together as a family. My dad was really a workaholic. And he was always working.

I think Lincoln had a unique parenting style. He let his kids run free and wild.

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

One of the gratuities about being a director is that you can volunteer yourself out of difficult details.

The baby boomers owe a big debt of gratitude to the parents and grandparents - who we haven't given enough credit to anyway - for giving us another generation.

'E.T.' began with me trying to write a story about my parents' divorce.

My dad's been responsible for a lot of my issues.

The only time I have a good hunch the audience is going to be there is when I make the sequel to 'Jurassic Park' or I make another Indiana Jones movie. I know I've got a good shot at getting an audience on opening night. Everything else that is striking out into new territory is a crap shoot.