"I dream for a living."

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

"When war comes, two things happen - profits go way, way up and all perishables go way, way down. There becomes a market for them."

"The public has an appetite for anything about imagination - anything that is as far away from reality as is creatively possible."

"Naturally, it is a terrible, despicable crime when, as in Munich, people are taken hostage, people are killed. But probing the motives of those responsible and showing that they are also individuals with families and have their own story does not excuse what they did."

"I'd rather direct than produce. Any day. And twice on Sunday."

"There is a fine line between censorship and good taste and moral responsibility."

"I've discovered I've got this preoccupation with ordinary people pursued by large forces."

"When I grow up, I still want to be a director."

"If Bush, as I believe, has reliable information on the fact that Saddam Hussein is making weapons of mass destruction, I cannot not support the policies of his government."

"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."

"You know, I don't really do that much looking inside me when I'm working on a project. Whatever I am becomes what that film is. But I change; you change."

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

"I interviewed survivors, I went to Poland, saw the cities and spent time with the people and spoke to the Jews who had come back to Poland after the war and talked about why they had come back."

"You have many years ahead of you to create the dreams that we can't even imagine dreaming. You have done more for the collective unconscious of this planet than you will ever know."

"People have forgotten how to tell a story. Stories don't have a middle or an end any more. They usually have a beginning that never stops beginning."

"A lot of the films I've made probably could have worked just as well 50 years ago, and that's just because I have a lot of old-fashion values."

"I never felt comfortable with myself, because I was never part of the majority. I always felt awkward and shy and on the outside of the momentum of my friends' lives."

"I'm not really interested in making money."

"I want to be the Cecil B. DeMille of science fiction."

"There is something about killing people at close range that is excruciating. It's bound to try a man's soul."

"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."