"EVERYBODY THINKS I JUST STUDIED DAVID LEAN. I was seeing everything Fellini or Antonioni put out five or six times over. We're the last generation who learned movies from movies. This new generation has learned movies from TV and MTV - the true technocrats have come in."
"I'VE HAD DARKNESS IN ALL OF THE MOVIES, IN E. T., JAWS. There are moments in Raiders Of The Lost Ark that are brutally dark. I just don't think people have stopped to study. They may not have stopped to think when they assume that I suddenly developed a dark side because of Schindler's List. When critics carp about my dark side, I always wonder, 'Well, did they really look in the shadows?'"
"I'VE NEVER USED JOHN WILLIAMS TO TELL PEOPLE HOW TO FEEL. I use John Williams to enhance my vision and my thoughts emotionally from scene to scene. He'll signal when the shark is coming, which are the most famous single notes next to Beethoven's Fifth. In telling a story, I will use every tool in my arsenal. I will do anything in my power to communicate the best story as I know how."
"I'M VERY RELAXED ABOUT OSCARS. I'll admit to you that I wasn't relaxed before I won for Schindler's List. I was pretty much worried about it and almost wanted to get one behind me to get the anxiety out of my gut every time December reared its ugly head. So after I won for Schindler's and Saving Private Ryan, I have no expectations of ever winning again. Whatever happens, happens."
"I DON'T LIKE THE NAME 'THE MOVIE BRATS' MUCH. We never thought of ourselves as brats. We thought of ourselves as nerds. We were a consolidated iteration of the generation that spawned Bogdanovich, Coppola and Friedkin. We were simply the next wave. I wish they'd called us 'The Movie Nerds', 'cause that's what we really were. We were just movie pigs."
"JUST A DAY BEFORE A MOVIE COMES OUT, THAT ISN'T FUN FOR ME. So, I'll do a ten, 15-day blackout where I don't read a newspaper or see a TV show. It's really scary."
"I WANTED TO DO A STAR WARS MOVIE BUT GEORGE DIDN'T WANT ME TO. I understand why - Star Wars is George's baby. George is my best friend and I believe I am his, but we are still competitive. That's important because it edges you on to do more interesting things."
"AMERICAN CRITICS HAVE TROUNCED MOST OF MY FILMS SINCE E. T.; I was kind of the hero for my first five movies and after E. T. was so successful, nothing kind of compared. It got to the point where I didn't really care what people thought. That was an important moment in my life: I realised I could make Schindler's without caring if anybody embraced it or rejected it. I just needed to do it for my own, personal reasons."
"I DON'T REALLY THINK THAT SUMMER MOVIES ARE DUMB. I get pleasure from a lot of movies that reek of buttered popcorn. I'm a big summer movie buff. I see almost everything that comes out in the summer when I'm not working - in theatres too. I can always find one or two good things that have been resoundingly panned. If I can pull a kernel of gold from a boulder of coal, I feel it was worth the price of a ticket."
"THE OLDER I GET, THE MORE I LOOK AT MOVIES AS A MOVING MIRACLE. Audiences are harder to please if you're just giving them special effects, but they're easy to please if it's a good story. The audience is also the toughest critic - a good story that exists in your world may not be the first choice of an audience. So I just do the best I can."
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