I think some of the special effects in Close Encounters hold up better than the new more expensive special effects is because they were better actually.

Yes I try to do everything I can not to fail hideously.

My dad was born in Chicago in 1908... his parents came from Russia. They settled in Chicago, where they lived in a little tiny grocery store with eight or nine children - in the backroom all together - and my grandmother got the idea to go into the movie business.

I've directed a fair amount of television series - so I'm always trying to learn new things. One episode was all hand-held and I'm trying to get better at when you should do things and when you should just shut up and watch what the people are saying.

I was born on Wellington Avenue and my family that remains lives in the Lake Shore Drive area.

But obviously as television began, it so undercut movies that he was trying to think of a way to combine seeing these special things, and the fact that people were just captivated by the magic box.

My dad was the baby. When he was born they were already successful. They sent him to business school - he probably would have loved to have been a poet or a writer or something, and he was very creative.

God, I'd love to do a big commercial movie that made a lot of money and whose plot was interesting too.

I have a 92 year old father whose doing beautifully who lives in Chicago and a sister and a nephew and a niece and I love coming back and try to do so fairly often.

If anyone would have been paying serious attention to my puppet shows, I would have been sent to therapy very young.

I'm from the Midwest, and I loved my family. I had a very good time as a child, but I was also - I have a theory about Jews growing up in the Midwest, that there is an ultimately sort of wonderful avoidance of a lot of things, and a great acceptance of whatever is happening.

I think some of the special effects in Close Encounters hold up better than the new more expensive special effects is because they were better actually.

I was very much in my room with my marionette stage, you know, creating these incredibly boring things that I felt were so fascinating, and forcing my relatives to come, and charging money for them to see my little productions.

My family was loving... they were very supportive and very affectionate, and basically I could do what I wanted, and basically it wasn't anything dangerous, thank God.

And I think being a good director is being able to be completely tyrannical and you?ve got to be an absolute dictator while at the same time, you have to listen and see everything because it can all change on a dime.

People so far have been very fond of the Robert Altman movie, as I am, and when one things goes well it shines light on your other projects and now I seem to have a number of projects that are moving forward.

I mean, the whole idea of movies was it was special to go to see - you went to a movie theater to see something that was magical and amazing, in a very special location.

I always think that a director who knows about the technical side, but cares about the acting performances and casting as well, is ahead of the game.

I produced and directed a movie a couple years ago that won some awards that Samuel Goldwyn released called 'The Last Good Time'. I wrote, produced and directed it, but I wasn't in it.

I'm from Chicago, my family started a chain of movie theaters in Chicago that were around for 70 years and then one of them became the head of Paramount and the other was the head of production at MGM and we all came out of Chicago.

I loved being in Close Encounters, just to watch Steven Spielberg working was exciting.

Maybe I was 7 - I probably am exaggerating a little - and immediately was plunged into the fact that there was an official place to put your fantasies. Up until then I didn't know what I would do with them all. It was very exciting for me, and I began very, very early on.

Oh, I was completely hooked on movies and plays and theater from the time I was a day old - I was very, very early on in love with movies and I loved plays.

And I think being a good director is being able to be completely tyrannical and you've got to be an absolute dictator while at the same time, you have to listen and see everything because it can all change on a dime.

Energy is neither created nor destroyed. It just changes shape.

I started my blog in 2002. That was pre-MySpace, pre-Facebook. That was back before newspapers realized they were going out of business. That was back when no one gave any credence to Internet writers.

I took the process of doing as much myself as I could like a duck to water. I set up my own label and publishing, etc, and it was a fun learning curve two decades ago.

You can enjoy a $15 bottle of wine as much as you can enjoy a $100 bottle of wine.

I find that arduous physical labor can jump-start my thought process.

I'm not opposed to putting myself in danger for meaningless comedy.

To trap one's self-suffering is to risk being devoured from the inside.

Whenever I get happy, I always have a terrible feeling.

I went to an all-girls' Christian convent school run by nuns. It was fun, but when I was 15, I said, 'Mum, that's it - I need to go where there are some boys.'

When we make progress quickly, it feeds our emotions. Then, when there's a period of waiting or we hit a plateau, we find out how committed we really are and whether we're going to see things through to the finish or quit.

Shareholder activism is not a privilege - it is a right and a responsibility. When we invest in a company, we own part of that company and we are partly responsible for how that company progresses. If we believe there is something going wrong with the company, then we, as shareholders, must become active and vocal.

I've always believed no matter how many shots I miss, I'm going to make the next one.

If I hadn't been a singer, I might have been a photographer or an artist. But it's singing I love. I sing all the time, and I feel really good that I've expressed myself.

I saw Jimi Hendrix - it must have been four times. And he was incomparable, and his legend lives on.

To win you have to score one more goal than your opponent.

It's really interesting working in television as opposed to the theater, where you know the arc of the character and you are able to create this whole backstory.

The silence of the pen is only made louder by the sound of the ink running dry.

Nothing is easy to the unwilling.

Hold prayer in high esteem. It is the foundation of all the virtues and the source of all grace needed to sanctify ourselves and to discharge the duties of our employment.

I'm a bit of a slag... Some people don't think it's very nice, but I don't care... I've got hormones, and sex is there, so why not? Sex is good. Everybody does it, and everybody should!

After 'An Inconvenient Truth' came out, a lot of people came to me with their causes, and there are a lot - water, poverty, and so many, many more.

I've got an idea for a modern day faerie tale that I think would made a great short novel. But I just don't have the time to work on it right now. I'm way too busy with the 'Kingkiller Chronicles' and being a new dad.

There are such beings as vampires, some of us have evidence that they exist. Even had we not the proof of our own unhappy experience, the teachings and the records of the past give proof enough for sane peoples.

Now for my own case, I bless the Lord that, for all that hath been said of me, my conscience doth not condemn me. I do not say I am free of sin, but I am at peace with God through a slain Mediator; and I believe that there is no salvation but only in Christ.