I think that George Lucas' 'Star Wars' films are fantastic. What he's done, which I admire, is he has taken all the money and profit from those films and poured it into developing digital sound and surround sound, which we are using today.

To get an Oscar would be an incredible moment in my career, there is no doubt about that. But the 'Lord of the Rings' films are not made for Oscars, they are made for the audience.

New Zealand is not a small country but a large village.

I think that George Lucas' 'Star Wars' films are fantastic. What he's done, which I admire, is he has taken all the money and profit from those films and poured it into developing digital sound and surround sound, which we are using today.

'Temeraire' is a terrific meld of two genres that I particularly love - fantasy and historical epic.

'The Lord of the Rings,' published in the mid-1950s, was intended as a prehistory to our own world. It was perceived by Tolkien to be a small but significant episode in a vast alternate mythology constructed entirely out of his own imagination.

'The Return Of The King' has a conclusion.

100 years ago, movies were black-and-white, silent, and 16 frames a second. So 100 years from now, what are they going to be?

48 frames per second is something you have to get used to. I've got absolute belief and faith in 48 frames... it's something that could have ramifications for the entire industry. 'The Hobbit' really is the test of that.

Actors will never be replaced. The thought that somehow a computer version of a character is going to be something people prefer to look at is a ludicrous idea.

Adapting a novel is not really about being faithful to every word and every moment the author has created. It's more about that same story being filtered through somebody else's sensibility.

Anything you can imagine, you can put on film.

As a filmmaker, I believe in trying to make movies that invite the audience to be part of the film; in other words, there are some films where I'm just a spectator and am simply observing from the front seat. What I try to do is draw the audience into the film and have them participate in what's happening onscreen.

As a filmmaker, you want nothing more than to have people say, 'I love your movie.'

Being honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame alongside the names of some of my childhood heroes is slightly surreal and incredibly awesome.

Buster Keaton's 'The General,' from 1927, I think is still one of the great films of all time.

Continuing advances in stem cell medicine will change all of our lives for the better.

Critics in particular treat CGI as a virus that's infecting film.

Every time you do something, people are going to like it, people are going to hate it. You tend to make the movies on the basis you are making them for the people who are going to like them and not worrying too much about people who don't like them.

Everybody's life has these moments, where one thing leads to another. Some are big and obvious and some are small and seemingly insignificant.

Film is such a powerful medium. It's like a weapon and I think you have a duty to self-censor.

Filmmakers have to commit to making 3-D films properly like Jim Cameron did and not do cheap conversions at the tail end of the process.

Filmmaking for me is always aiming for the imaginary movie and never achieving it.

For a lot of my childhood, I didn't want to direct movies because I didn't really know what directing was.

For me, utter failure is to make a film that people pay their money to go see and they don't like.

Forty-eight frames per second is a way, way better way to look at 3D. It's so much more comfortable on the eyes.

I always have had a slightly jaundiced view about people who promote books about themselves.

I am not anti-media at all. But the media, the news anywhere in the world, is based on drama.

I can't take responsibility for everyone's employment.

I didn't want my kids having to pass through an airport named after their father.

I didn't want people to sit there and watch 10 minutes of film,and all they write about is 48 frames.

I don't have an anti-Hollywood feeling. It's just I'm a New Zealander. I was born in New Zealand, and it's where my house is, and my family goes to school there. My interest is to remain in my homeland and make films. I don't really want to relocate myself to other countries in the world to work.

I don't like directing that much to want a career as a director for hire. I like to have as much creative control as possible.

I don't quite know what an auteur is.

I don't really want to make a stylized film or anything too surreal.

I feel very lucky to be able to make movies in New Zealand, and I will always be grateful for the support I have received from so many New Zealanders.

I fell in love with stories watching a British television puppet show called 'Thunderbirds' when it first came out on TV, about 1965, so I would have been 4 or 5 years old. I went out into the garden at my mom and dad's house, and I used to play with my little dinky toys, little cars and trucks and things.

I first read 'The Lord of the Rings' as an adolescent. It's a dense novel, a sprawling, complex monster of a book populated with a prolific number of characters caught up in a narrative structure that, frankly, does not lend itself to conventional storytelling.

I have a freedom that's incredibly valuable. Obviously my freedom is far smaller in scale than people like Zemeckis and Spielberg have here. But it's comparable. I can dream up a project, develop it, make it, control it, release it.

I have a million questions about my granddad and no one to talk to.

I haven't got a real job.

I hope one day that I'll get to make another horror film; I'd love to.

I just got tired of being overweight and unfit, so I changed my diet from hamburgers to yogurt and muesli, and it seems to work.

I just think that we're living in a world where the technology is advancing so rapidly. You're having cameras that are capable of more and more - the resolution on cameras is jumping up.

I like to keep an open mind, but I do think there is some form of energy that exists separate to our flesh and blood. I do think that there's some kind of an energy that leaves the body when it dies, but I certainly don't have religious beliefs particularly.

I love Bilbo Baggins. I relate really well to Bilbo!

I love writing, and I love postproduction. That's great, because you start to reassemble the film, and you sit there, and you start to really put the film together, finally. The shooting of it is the most stressful part of the process.

I make cameos in all my movies for no particular reason other than a joke. It's just a Hitchcock thing.

I mean, I didn't have a huge upbringing with movies, I guess.