Steven Spielberg

It starts with the writer-it's a familiar dictum, but somehow it keeps getting forgotten along the way. No film-maker, irrespective of his electronic bag of tricks, can ever afford to forget his commitment to the written word.

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.

I just had a crazy, wild imagination all my life, and science fiction is the greatest outlet for me.

From a very young age, my parents taught me the most important lesson of my whole life: They taught me how to listen. They taught me how to listen to everybody before I made up my own mind. When you listen, you learn. You absorb like a sponge - and your life becomes so much better than when you are just trying to be listened to all the time.

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.

There are so many rumours about so many of us in the public eye. Sometimes it's too hard to deny what is not true.

I love my kids as individuals, not as a herd, and I do have a herd of children: I have seven kids.

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.

I made 'Saving Private Ryan' for my father. He's the one who filled my head with war stories when I was growing up.

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

Humans are the only hunters who kill when not hungry.

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.

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

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

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

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

Because of how much movies cost, it's dangerous to be experimental on one film after the other. But we can experiment with television. We can do things that are fringe and bring ideas to the table that are offbeat and original.

I think producers are more interested in backing concepts than directors and writers. I don't think that's the right way of making a decision about whether you're going to back a film or not.

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.

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.

You can't intellectually purge yourself of who you are. Whatever that is, it's going to come out in the wash, the film wash. What you are is going to be relevant, if not to yourself, to the movies you make.