Steven Spielberg Quotes on Movies (13 Quotes)

I like the smell of film. I just like knowing there's film going through the camera.

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

I felt, for the first time in my career, that I was directing a stage production more than a motion picture. Part of directing is psychotherapy. You're sitting there with a lot of very talented patients, and you're hoping your movie doesn't blow up in your face in anarchy.

I will never make a movie about any of the events of 911.

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.

My intention was never to replace the original film. When people buy 'E.T.' I want them to know they have the original movie, not just for collectors and aficionados, but for everybody who remembers it and wants to continue remembering it just that way.

These movies are asking sensitive questions about racial intolerance and Middle East politics. It's been an amazing year, very much like 1968, '69 and '70, when you suddenly see all of these political movies coming out at the same time, out of the watershed of politics. Some of it is due to our own insecurity about the voices representing us in government right now. We feel like our government has set us adrift, and we're trying to make our voices heard. We're telling them to be worried about these things.

My film refuses to be a pamphlet. My screenwriter, Tony Kushner, and I were hoping to make it a visceral, emotional and intellectual experience, combined in such a way that it will help you get in touch with what you feel are the questions the film poses. The most important thing about peace in the Middle East is that people surrender their absolute certainty about what's going on.

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.

It would make people more comfortable if I made a film that said all targeted assassination is bad, or good, but the movie doesn't take either of those positions. It refuses to. Many of those pundits on the Left and Right would love the film to land somewhere definite. It puts a real burden on the audience to figure out for themselves how they feel about these issues. There are no easy answers to the most complex story of the last 50 years.

I don't think this collection of films represent everything. We're not delivering a shared point of view. These movies are all so different from each other. We all look at a movie through a prism of everything our parents and teachers taught us and what our children are telling us. You can't make a movie expecting everyone will have the same reaction. Ten people seeing 'Munich' will come out with 10 different points of view. It was always that way, sitting around the Passover table talking about the Middle East.

If he picks the right roles and doesn't forget the theater, I think he can eventually be Alec Guinness or Laurence Olivier.

This is a courageous year for filmmakers. ... They are saying 'If I never make another film, this one says what I think and feel.