'E.T.' began with me trying to write a story about my parents' divorce.
A lot of kids only know 'E.T.' from the digitally-enhanced version.
All of us every single year, we're a different person. I don't think we're the same person all our lives.
And I may often question choices I make as a producer. But I've never questioned the choices I make as a director.
Bloated budgets are ruining Hollywood - these pictures are squeezing all the other types of movies out of Hollywood. It's disastrous.
Casting sometimes is fate and destiny more than skill and talent, from a director's point of view.
Cell phones tend to bring us more inside of our lives whereas movies offer a chance to escape, so there are two competing forces.
Documentaries are the first line of education, and the second line of education is dramatization, such as 'The Pacific'.
Even though I get older, what I do never gets old, and that's what I think keeps me hungry.
Every time I go to a movie, it's magic, no matter what the movie's about.
Everybody who works for Amblin Television has to do five jobs.
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.
For one thing, I don't think that anybody in any war thinks of themselves as a hero.
For the most part, everybody who fights in war fights to survive.
History opens up new worlds to film-makers all the time.
I've always been interested in how we survive and how resourceful we are as Americans.
I love editing. It's one of my favorite parts about filmmaking.
The Internet has been this miraculous conduit to the undeniable truth to the Holocaust.
The delicate balance of mentoring someone is not creating them in your own image, but giving them the opportunity to create themselves.
Making a movie and not directing the little moments is like drinking a soda and leaving the little slurp puddle for someone else.
I feel I'm all over my movies. I know my movies are all over me.
My early exposure to all the leviathans of the Saturday matinee creature features inspired me, when I grew up, to make 'Jurassic Park.'
I quit college so fast I didn't even clean out my locker.
I dream for a living. Once a month the sky falls on my head, I come to, and I see another movie I want to make.
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.
When I don't have a story to tell, I'm a terror to live with.
I'm not a great man to my children. I'm just 'Pop.' The more involved I am with my kids, it keeps my head flat on top.
Money to me is not a factor in my life.
