When you are a beginning film maker you are desperate to survive. The most important thing in the end is survival and being able to get to your next picture.

A lot of people like to do certain things, but they're not that good at it. Keep going through the things that you like to do, until you find something that you actually seem to be extremely good at. It can be anything.

Film is not an easy occupation. There's a lot of occupations that are difficult and film is one of them.

Everybody has talent, it's just a matter of moving around until you've discovered what it is.

Learning to make films is very easy. Learning what to make films about is very hard.

Although I write screenplays, I don't think I'm a very good writer.

When you are a beginning film maker you are desperate to survive. The most important thing in the end is survival and being able to get to your next picture.

Working hard is very important. You're not going to get anywhere without working extremely hard.

Even in high school I was very interested in history - why people do the things they do. As a kid I spent a lot of time trying to relate the past to the present.

If the boy and girl walk off into the sunset hand-in-hand in the last scene, it adds 10 million to the box office.

Good luck has its storms.

He took me from not being able to write a word in terms of writing screenplays to being the king of wooden dialogue.

The ideals and principles for which Dr King fought have never been forgotten and are as relevant today as they were 40 years ago.

Part of the issue of achievement is to be able to set realistic goals, but that's one of the hardest things to do because you don't always know exactly where you're going, and you shouldn't.

The secret to film is that it's an illusion.

'Star Wars' is fun, its exciting, its inspirational, and people respond to that. It's what they want.

Whatever has happened in my quest for innovation has been part of my quest for immaculate reality.

I thought Star Wars was too wacky for the general public.

You simply have to put one foot in front of the other and keep going. Put blinders on and plow right ahead.

'Young Indiana Jones' was one of the happiest times I ever had, so I love television.

A director makes 100 decisions an hour. Students ask me how you know how to make the right decision, and I say to them, 'If you don't know how to make the right decision, you're not a director.'

A film is sort of binary - it either works or it doesn't work. It has nothing to do with how good a job you do. If you bring it up to an adequate level where the audience goes with the movie, then it works, that is all.

A special effect is a tool, a means of telling a story. A special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing.

Before I became a film major, I was very heavily into social science, I had done a lot of sociology, anthropology, and I was playing in what I call social psychology, which is sort of an offshoot of anthropology/sociology - looking at a culture as a living organism, why it does what it does.

Digital technology allows us a much larger scope to tell stories that were pretty much the grounds of the literary media.

Everyone seems to think that digital technology devoids the medium of content, but that is not true at all. If anything, it broadens the content.

Football games are on TV, and it doesn't affect stadium attendance at all. It's the same with movies. People who really love movies and like to go out on a Saturday night will go to the movie theater.

I am a giant proponent of giant screens. But I accept the fact that most of my movies are going to be seen on phones.

I am simply trying to struggle through life; trying to do God's bidding.

I grew up in San Francisco. And so I'm informed in a certain kind of way about, you know, believing in democracy and believing in America. And I'm a very ardent patriot.

I live a reasonably simple life, off the beaten track.

I loved photography and everybody said it was a crazy thing to do because in those days nobody made it into the film business. I mean, unless you were related to somebody there was no way in.

I started out in anthropology, so to me how society works, how people put themselves together and make things work, has always been a big interest.

I wanted to race cars. I didn't like school, and all I wanted to do was work on cars. But right before I graduated, I got into a really bad car accident, and I spent that summer in the hospital thinking about where I was heading. I decided to take education more seriously and go to a community college.

I was going to go to a four-year college and be an anthropologist or to an art school and be an illustrator when a friend convinced me to learn photography at the University of Southern California. Little did I know it was a school that taught you how to make movies! It had never occurred to me that I'd ever have any interest in filmmaking.

I was never interested in being powerful or famous. But once I got to film school and learned about movies, I just fell in love with it. I didn't care what kind of movies I made.

I'm not much of a math and science guy. I spent most of my time in school daydreaming and managed to turn it into a living.

I've come to the conclusion that mythology is really a form of archaeological psychology. Mythology gives you a sense of what a people believes, what they fear.

If you look at 'Blade Runner,' it's been cut sixteen ways from Sunday, and there are all kinds of different versions of it.

If you really love films, and you really want to get the full impact, there's a huge difference between watching something on a small screen with a mediocre sound system and watching it on a giant screen in a giant theater with a huge beautiful sound system. I mean, the difference is electric.

In 3-D filmmaking, I can take images and manipulate them infinitely, as opposed to taking still photographs and laying them one after the other. I move things in all directions. It's such a liberating experience.

It was the money from 'Star Wars' and 'Jaws' that allowed the theaters to build their multiplexes, which allowed an opening up of screens.

Making a film is like putting out a fire with sieve. There are so many elements, and it gets so complicated.

None of the films I've done was designed for a mass audience, except for 'Indiana Jones.' Nobody in their right mind thought 'American Graffiti' or 'Star Wars' would work.

One of the amazing things about 'Seven Samurai' is that there are a lot of characters. And considering you have so many, and they all have shaved heads, and you've got good guys and bad guys and peasants, you get to understand a lot of them without too much being said.

One thing about 'Star Wars' that I'm really proud of is that it expands the imagination. That's why I like the 'Star Wars' toys.

Storytelling is about two things; it's about character and plot.

The influence of 'Hidden Fortress' comes up a lot because it was printed in a book once. The truth is, the only thing I was inspired by was the fact that it's told from the point of view of two peasants, who get mixed up with a samurai and princess and a lot of very high-level people.

The secret is not to give up hope. It's very hard not to because if you're really doing something worthwhile I think you will be pushed to the brink of hopelessness before you come through the other side.