"Steven Spielberg is unique. I feel that the kinds of movies he loves are the same kinds of movies that the big mass audience loves. He's very fortunate because he can do the things he naturally likes the best, and he's been very successful."

"When a movie is about to come out on its initial debut, there are a lot of people involved - the financiers, the studio and the producers and also, many times, the foreign distributors. So it is a time of tremendous pressure and uncertainty."

"When I was sixteen or seventeen, I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a playwright. But everything I wrote, I thought, was weak. And I can remember falling asleep in tears because I had no talent the way I wanted to have."

"We were raised in an Italian-American household, although we didn't speak Italian in the house. We were very proud of being Italian, and had Italian music, ate Italian food."

"We had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little, we went insane."

"In kindergarten that used to be my job, to tell them fairytales. I liked Hans Christian Andersen, and the Grimm fairy tales, all the classic fairy tales."

"It's ironic that at age 32, at probably the greatest moment of my career, with The Godfather having such an enormous success, I wasn't even aware of it, because I was somewhere else under the deadline again."

"I was the kind of kid that had some talents or ability, but it never came out in school."

"I thought I wanted to be a playwright because I was interested in stories and telling stories."

"I remember teachers who really singled me out for their discouragement."

"I remember growing up with television, from the time it was just a test pattern, with maybe a little bit of programming once in a while."

"I liked to work in a shop down in the basement and invent things and build gadgets."

"I had been a kid that moved so much, I didn't have a lot of friends. Theater really represented camaraderie."

"I had an older brother who was very interested in literature, so I had an early exposure to literature, and and theater. My father sometimes would work in musical comedies."

"I had a number of teachers who hated me. I didn't do well in school."

"I don't think there's any artist of any value who doesn't doubt what they're doing."

"I became quite successful very young, and it was mainly because I was so enthusiastic and I just worked so hard at it."

"I associate my motion picture career more with being unhappy and scared, or being under the gun, than with anything pleasant."

"I always found the film world unpleasant. It's all about the schedule, and never really flew for me."

"George Lucas doesn't have the most physical stamina. He was so unhappy making Star Wars that he just vowed he'd never do it again."

"Frank Capra was a prop man, I think. John Ford was a prop man. It was a little bit of a father and son thing, and you kind of worked your way up."

"A number of images put together a certain way become something quite above and beyond what any of them are individually."

"Listen, if there's one sure-fire rule that I have learned in this business, it's that I don't know anything about human nature."

"All of a sudden, there are great Japanese films, or great Italian films, or great Australian films. It's usually because there are a number of people that cross-pollinated each other."