110+ Steven Spielberg Quotes On Success, Storytelling And John Williams

Steven Spielberg is an American director, producer, and screenwriter. He is one of the most influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. He is best known for his iconic films such as Jaws, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and Jurassic Park. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Steven Spielberg on success, storytelling, john williams.

Top 10 Steven Spielberg Quotes

1. 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.
2. All of us every single year, we're a different person. I don't think we're the same person all our lives.
3. Failure is inevitable. Success is elusive.
4. Our one goal is to give the world a taste of peace, friendship and understanding. Through the visual arts, the art of celebration of life.
5. I'm always in favor of Israel responding strongly when it's threatened.
6. Before I go off and direct a movie, I always look at four films. They tend to be The Seven Samurai, Lawrence Of Arabia, It's A Wonderful Life and The Searchers.
7. I interviewed survivors, I went to Poland, saw the cities and spent time with the people and spoke to the Jews who had come back to Poland after the war and talked about why they had come back.
8. The world would be a poorer place without Doctor Who.
9. Every time I go to a movie, it's magic, no matter what the movie's about.
10. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Jihadism have nothing to do with each other.

Steven Spielberg Short Quotes

• Why pay a dollar for a bookmark? Why not use the dollar for a bookmark?
• You shouldn't dream your film, you should make it!
• All good ideas start out as bad ideas, that's why it takes so long.
• Only a generation of readers will span a generation of writers.
• Well, luckily with animation, fantasy is your friend.
• There is a fine line between censorship and good taste and moral responsibility.
• Wherever you are, I will find you and I will bring you home
• Casting sometimes is fate and destiny more than skill and talent, from a director's point of view.
• All through my career I've done what I can to discover new talent and give them a start.
• You're not alone, are you? Because I'm here

Steven Spielberg Quotes About Success

I turned down 'Harry Potter' and 'Spider-Man,' two movies that I knew would be phenomenally successful, because I had already made movies like that before and they offered no challenge to me. I don't need my ego to be reminded. — Steven Spielberg

I'm not really interested in making money. That's always come as the result of success, but it's not been my goal. — Steven Spielberg

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

Steven Spielberg Quotes About Storytelling

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. — Steven Spielberg

People have forgotten how to tell a story. — Steven Spielberg

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. — Steven Spielberg

I don't make unconventional stories; I don't make non-linear stories. I like linear storytelling a lot. — Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg Quotes About People

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. — Steven Spielberg

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. — Steven Spielberg

I've discovered I've got this preoccupation with ordinary people pursued by large forces. — Steven Spielberg

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. — Steven Spielberg

This is a time when we need to smile more and Hollywood movies are supposed to do that for people in difficult times. — Steven Spielberg

I love to go to a regular movie theater, especially when the movie is a big crowd-pleaser. It's much better watching a movie with 500 people making noise than with just a dozen. — Steven Spielberg

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. — Steven Spielberg

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. — Steven Spielberg

Lincoln believed in the American people. — Steven Spielberg

I hate that people think it's wrong to say you're inspired by Jaws or by Raiders Of The Lost Ark. You're allowed to be. — Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg Quotes About Years

A lot of the films I've made probably could have worked just as well 50 years ago, and that's just because I have a lot of old-fashion values. — Steven Spielberg

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. — Steven Spielberg

The most expensive habit in the world is celluloid, not heroin, and I need a fix every few years. — Steven Spielberg

All those horrible, traumatic years I spent as a kid became what I draw from creatively today. — Steven Spielberg

Social media has taken over in America to such an extreme that to get my own kids to look back a week in their history is a miracle, let alone 100 years. — Steven Spielberg

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. — Steven Spielberg

I'm 62 years old. Am I old enough to win a lifetime achievement award? Yes, I am. Thank you very much. — Steven Spielberg

I did not make this film about Frank Abagnale because of what he did . . but because of what he has done with his life the past 30 years. — Steven Spielberg

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. — Steven Spielberg

People can relate to horses. Horses, I think, are basically in our genetic history. Horses were part of our culture, part of our collective society, for hundreds of years, and so, the horse is one of the most familiar animals to people of any race or culture or country. — Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg Famous Quotes And Sayings

Movies are always in a state of locomotion. You start with a general idea of how it should feel and then you find you've got a runaway train. You have to race to catch up: the movie is telling you what it wants to become, and when that happens there's no greater feeling. — Steven Spielberg

It is important to know who your friends are and to stay, remain loyal to your friends, despite what you hear, despite the mistakes that are made in friendships and misunderstandings that commonly occur, to be able to forgive and to move on, you have to be able to remember the values of friendship. — Steven Spielberg

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

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. — Steven Spielberg

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. — Steven Spielberg

I don't think any movie or any book or any work of art can solve the stalemate in the Middle East today. But it's certainly worth a try. — Steven Spielberg

Audiences are harder to please if you're just giving them effects, but they're easy to please if it's a good story. — Steven Spielberg

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. — Steven Spielberg

He never gave up. And he does that for us — Steven Spielberg

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. — Steven Spielberg

I've always been interested in UFOs. — Steven Spielberg

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

I think one of the worst things that happened to me was, you know, my voluntary fallout with my father. And then the greatest thing that happened to me was when I saw the light, and realized I needed to love him in a way that he could love me back. — Steven Spielberg

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. — Steven Spielberg

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. — Steven Spielberg

The only thing that gets me back to directing is good scripts. — Steven Spielberg

Audience members are only concerned about the story, the concept, the bells and whistles and the noise that a popular film starts to make even before it's popular. So audiences will not be drawn to the technology; they'll be drawn to the story. And I hope it always remains that way. — Steven Spielberg

The Japanese had a very strong belief in Bushido, death before dishonour. They were fighting for their country; they were the aggressors in World War II. — Steven Spielberg

When war comes, two things happen - profits go way, way up and all perishables go way, way down. There becomes a market for them. — Steven Spielberg

I basically took something that was extremely erotic and very intentional, and I reduced it to a simple kiss. I got a lot of criticism for that. — Steven Spielberg

The most amazing thing for me is that every single person who sees a movie, not necessarily one of my movies, brings a whole set of unique experiences. Now, through careful manipulation and good storytelling, you can get everybody to clap at the same time, to hopefully laugh at the same time, and to be afraid at the same time. — Steven Spielberg

I am a very impatient director. — Steven Spielberg

In '83, not only was there no such thing as performance motion capture technology, there was no such thing as digital animation. This was the analog era. — Steven Spielberg

I think the secret of great acting is that you have to bring your imagination to the party. You have to have a great imagination and you have to bring it every day when you're working. Your imagination and your skills as an actor are what see you through, not what you're wearing or where you are. — Steven Spielberg

I think all directors should be animators. — Steven Spielberg

I was a scared kid... I think I was born a nervous wreck, and I think movies were one way to find a way transferring my own private horrors to everyone else's lives. It was less of an escape and more of an exorcism. — Steven Spielberg

I've always wanted to tell a story about Lincoln. I saw a paternal father figure; I saw someone who was completely, stubbornly committed to his ideals, to his vision. — Steven Spielberg

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. — Steven Spielberg

I made 'Empire of the Sun' in Shanghai in the 1980s and want to come back one day to make a movie in China. — Steven Spielberg

Some movies I make for myself. I just sort of make them for myself. I do that sometimes when the subject matter is very sensitive and very personal and I really can't imagine I'm an audience. — Steven Spielberg

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

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. — Steven Spielberg

Most of my presumptions about a production are usually wrong. — Steven Spielberg

I want to be the Cecil B. DeMille of science fiction. — Steven Spielberg

If I weren't a director, I would want to be a film composer. — Steven Spielberg

My filmmaking really began with technology. It began through technology, not through telling stories, because my 8mm movie camera was the way into whatever I decided to do. — Steven Spielberg

I believe in 3D for certain kinds of films. I certainly believe in using 3D for all things in animation because animation has such clarity and so much depth of focus. It worked great with 'Avatar' because 70 percent of that film is animated. — Steven Spielberg

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. — Steven Spielberg

I think that the perceived downs in my own career come from just managing my time and not feeling that I have enough time for my family or my friends. You could put that in the personal life category but it's all one category because I've got to balance my family. — Steven Spielberg

I feel like Ive been engaged to the British Empire since 1980 and tonight you have given me the ring knighthood. — Steven Spielberg

'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. — Steven Spielberg

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. — Steven Spielberg

Bloated budgets are ruining Hollywood - these pictures are squeezing all the other types of movies out of Hollywood. It's disastrous. — Steven Spielberg

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. — Steven Spielberg

Godzilla was the most masterful of all dinosaur movies because it made you believe it was really happening. — Steven Spielberg

The greatest films ever made in our history were cut on film, and I'm tenaciously hanging on to the process. I just love going into an editing room and smelling the photochemistry and seeing my editor wearing mini-strands of film around his neck. — Steven Spielberg

All presidents swear an oath to the Constitution to keep this country united, and when the country fell apart, Lincoln had to put it back together again, with a lot of help. But he bore total responsibility. — Steven Spielberg

Am I allowed to say I really wanted this? This is fantastic. — Steven Spielberg

The bones of the story of 'War Horse' is a love story. That's what makes it universal. — Steven Spielberg

My movies more often are told through pictures, not words. But in this case, the pictures took second position to the incredible words of Abraham Lincoln and his presence [...] I was less interested in an outpouring of imagery than in letting the most human moment of this story evolve before us. — Steven Spielberg

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. — Steven Spielberg

I think every film I make that puts characters in jeopardy is me purging my own fears, sadly only to re-engage with them shortly after the release of the picture. I'll never make enough films to purge them all. — Steven Spielberg

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. — Steven Spielberg

If Bush, as I believe, has reliable information on the fact that Saddam Hussein is making weapons of mass destruction, I cannot not support the policies of his government. — Steven Spielberg

I'm very used to working with first time actors - you can just look back at 'E.T.' with Drew Barrymore, and Christian Bale from 'Empire of the Sun,' who'd never made a movie before. — Steven Spielberg

I'm not really interested in making money. — Steven Spielberg

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

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

I'd rather direct than produce. Any day. And twice on Sunday. — Steven Spielberg

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. — Steven Spielberg

Akira Kurosawa is the pictorial William Shakespeare of our time. — Steven Spielberg

I still have pretty much the same fears I had as a kid. I'm not sure I'd want to give them up; a lot of these insecurities fuel the movies I make. — Steven Spielberg

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. — Steven Spielberg

I basically went into business for myself. But it never amounted to anything. I learned a lot about editing and dubbing by watching all the professionals do it, but I never got a job out of my imposition. — Steven Spielberg

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

I have always admired him (Bergman), and I wish I could be an equally good filmmaker as he is, but it will never happen. His love for the cinema almost gives me a guilty conscience — Steven Spielberg

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. — Steven Spielberg

I dream for a living. — Steven Spielberg

You look at war as something that is putting your best friend in jeopardy. You are responsible for the person in front of you and the person behind you, and the person to the left of you and the person to the right of you. — Steven Spielberg

We all feel that if we have a crazy idea that might get laughed at, there's nothing wrong with seeing if there's a crazy writer out there who agrees with us and can take it to a crazy network and somehow bring something that's a little bit daft and edgy to life. — Steven Spielberg

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. — Steven Spielberg

This whole thing about reality television to me is really indicative of America saying we're not satisfied just watching television, we want to star in our own TV shows. We want you to discover us and put us in your own TV show, and we want television to be about us, finally. — Steven Spielberg

My early exposure to all the leviathans of the Saturday matinee creature features inspired me, when I grew up, to make 'Jurassic Park.' — Steven Spielberg

Life Lessons by Steven Spielberg

1. Steven Spielberg teaches us to never give up on our dreams, no matter how difficult they may seem. He overcame many obstacles to become one of the most successful directors of all time.
2. He also reminds us to be resilient and to never let failure define us. He has experienced many failures throughout his career, but he has always bounced back and continued to strive for success.
3. Finally, Spielberg encourages us to stay humble and to always remember to give back. He has donated millions of dollars to various charities and organizations throughout his career.