Steven Spielberg Quotes
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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.
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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.
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Watching violence in movies or in TV programs stimulates the spectators to imitate what they see much more than if seen live or on TV news. In movies, violence is filmed with perfect illumination, spectacular scenery, and in slow motion, making it even romantic. However, in the news, the public has a much better perception of how horrible violence can be, and it is used with objectives that do not exist in the movies.
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I think Lincoln had a unique parenting style. He let his kids run free and wild.
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I don't really distinguish between a fictional hero and a real life hero as a basis for any comparison. To me, a hero is a hero. I like making pictures about people who have a personal mission in life or at least in the life of a story who start out with certain low expectations and then over achieve our highest expectations for them. That's the kind of character arc I love dabbling in as a director, as a filmmaker.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I like the smell of film. I just like knowing there's film going through the camera.
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I would love to do a musical. I would love that. I would have to find the right book, the right story, but some day I'm going to make one. I would really like to go off and direct a musical. That's what I would really like to do when I grow up.
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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.
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I don't want to quit. I've always said that Clint Eastwood is one of my best friends. I've known Clint for many years and we have almost a jokey relationship about retirement. I always say: "OK Clint, are you ready to retire this year?" And he always says: "No, are you?" So, I'm waiting for the phone call where Clint says he's hanging up his spurs. That's never going to happen. If it doesn't happen for Clint, it won't happen for me.
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The most expensive habit in the world is celluloid, not heroin, and I need a fix every few years.
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I've been shooting movies and television shows for now 47 years and I've worked with the best of them and Kirk Douglas is the only movie star I ever met.
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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.
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I am an American Jew and aware of the sensitivities involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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The age doesn't really matter to me as it seems to matter to other people. A lot of people think that youth or age is the total sum of your knowledge about anything, and it's absolutely untrue. I think I might have even known more five years ago than I do now.
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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.
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I see some parallels between then Lincoln's era and now. Certainly the division of ideologies between two parties, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. In 1865, the Democrats were the Conservatives and the Republicans were the progressives, and today it's just the opposite.
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'The Color Purple' is the kind of character piece that a director like Sidney Lumet could do brilliantly with one hand tied behind his back.
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I thought film was more important than life itself for many years. But I was naive to the world until my first child was born in 1985.
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Lincoln's leadership is based on a number of precepts, but my favorite one is that he acted in the name, and for the good, of the people.
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I've always sort of time-locked and mind-blocked myself in my 30s, and that's always the age I feel.
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I think all directors should be animators.