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.

I'm enjoying simplifying things.

There's something about a Gucci loafer kicking on a fuzz pedal.

Say nothing good of yourself, you will be distrusted; say nothing bad of yourself, you will be taken at your word.

Keynesian modelling relies on marginal propensity to consume and marginal propensity to invest. The idea that if we give more money to the poor, they have a propensity to consume that's much higher than the wealthy, though I wish they would talk to my wife about that; she seems to have a propensity to consume.

Even a two-degree climb in average global temperatures could cause crop failures in parts of the world that can least afford to lose the nourishment. The size of deserts would increase, along with the frequency and intensity of wildfires.

Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.

The satisfaction derived from the fleeting things of life is not lasting; and our wants remain unfulfilled. There is thus a general sense of dissatisfaction accompanied by all kinds of worries.

Well, my life hasn't really changed... I've been homeschooled for a long time. So that helped a lot because of shooting and stuff. But, I have had friends who I've been friends with for years and years and they are my true friends, you know?

I see myself on the cover of a magazine and I don't think that it looks like me at all. My first-ever photo shoot was for the cover of a lads' magazine.

Life began three and a half billion years ago, necessarily about as simple as it could be, because life arose spontaneously from the organic compounds in the primeval oceans.

In anything I've ever written, all the characters sound like me, which I don't think is a bad thing. It makes sense. But I had always admired filmmakers who made movies that didn't sound like them at all.

Age is inevitable. Aging isn't.

I travel a lot, and I hunt for fabrics, then I have the tailor make me something.

Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.

Before we made films about gangsters, everything was about the royal families. They contain so much drama.

Personally I don't like it when writers become excessively proscriptive about the way that people read their books.

I hate the idea of success robbing you of your private life.

There are certain directors who will start talking to you about something, and suddenly you'll be ready to roll, and you'll realize it was very specific.

There are no goodbyes. Where ever you'll be, you'll be in my heart.

You're either in it for the long haul or you're not.

Arguments are like fire arms which a man may keep at home but should not carry about with him.

When two or more people agree on an issue, I form on the other side.

There's something really beautiful about science, that human beings can ask these questions and can answer them. You can make models of nature and understand how it works.

He was living in an age much more dangerous, more painful, much more on the edge than our own particular age.