"A bad play folds and is forgotten, but in pictures we don't bury our dead. When you think it's out of your system, your daughter sees it on television and says, My father is an idiot."

"Eighty percent of a picture is writing, the other twenty percent is the execution, such as having the camera on the right spot and being able to afford to have good actors in all parts."

"I refuse to be pessimistic. I don't believe in it. I hope that we can find a way to keep from destroying the earth."

"I'm really concerned about the quality of education in the United States. I think it's going down, and I don't think we spend enough money on it. It's unhealthy for our society that we remove ourselves more and more every day from books, from reading, from writing. All areas of education need more emphasis. I think we're a bit lazy here in America. I believe in the ideal of the classic liberal education, and I also think athletics are very important to the education of young people."

"It makes me feel like a very special person, that I'm able to make my living with my imagination. I developed a big respect for my calling while I was in school, and it remains with me to this day."

"I'm one of those people who feels that agriculture is a creative act. It's a very fine art — that's the way I approach it."

"Create turf, save water. Those are the two main principles. And, you know, keep everything alive. Maintain a game habitat. That's important so that you have an entire system at work. Cattle are going to do better, oddly enough, if the birds are doing good and the deer are doing good. You try to manage the whole thing."

"The old-timers thought, Well, fire's bad; we'll get rid of it. That was certainly a mistake. We have to get it back into the system somehow, in safe, controlled ways. That's what I'm into now."

"That piece of Hollywood shit with Billy Wilder [Buddy Buddy] is over, thank God. No outsider can imagine the stupidity, blustering hysteria, authoritarianism, and paralyzing boredom of shooting a flick for Billy Wilder. The so-called "actors" are simply trained poodles who sit up on their hind legs and jump through hoops. I thought the insanity would never stop. But I got a shitload of money."

"Anyone who doesn't believe in miracles isn't a realist."

"I have ten commandments. The first nine are, thou shalt not bore. The tenth is, thou shalt have right of final cut."

"I dream for a living."

"The most expensive habit in the world is celluloid, not heroin, and I need a fix every few years."

"Oh, torture. Torture. My pubic hairs went gray."

"I think there's a side of me that's trying to compete with Lucas and Spielberg — I don't usually admit this publicly — because I tend to think that they only go so far, and their view of the world is rather simplistic. What I want to do is take whatever cinema is considered normal or successful at a particular time and play around with it — to use it as a way of luring audiences in."

"Steven's films are marked most importantly by a faith in our common humanity. His stories have shaped America's story, and his values have shaped our world."

"I love Rambo but I think it's potentially a very dangerous movie. It changes history in a frightening way."

"Failure is inevitable. Success is elusive."

"There is no such thing as science fiction, there is only science eventuality."

"[Steven Spielberg's films] are comforting, they always give you answers and I don't think they're very clever answers. … The success of most Hollywood films these days is down to fact that they're comforting. They tie things up in nice little bows and give you answers, even if the answers are stupid, you go home and you don't have to think about it. … The great filmmakers make you go home and think about it."

"Spielberg has been ridiculed for shooting his actors from below against impossibly Spielbergian skies and a denouement that lays the love on copiously. But there’s nothing simpleminded about how he uses movie magic, as a spell to dispel nihilism, to save us from the worst of ourselves by summoning up the best."

"I couldn't retire if I hadn't done The Psychiatrist, one thing that was absolutely right! I was a last-minute choice. I hadn't read the script when I came on the set. But I watched Spielberg directing — this kid, this infant in a cowboy hat — and I knew after five minutes we had something. You get so distrustful in this business that you get to expect nothing from a director. If he leaves you alone, he's a good director. But to find one like Spielberg who really brings a scene to life, who genuinely contributes — it makes you want to cry. It's like being an orphan all your life who is suddenly adopted."

"Watching violence in movies or TV programs stimulates the spectators to imitate what they see much more than if seen live or on TV news. In movies, violence is filmed with perfect illumination, spectacular scenery, and in slow motion, making it even romantic. However, in the news, the public has a much better perception of how horrible violence can be, and it is used with objectives that do not exist in the movies."

"People have forgotten how to tell a story."

"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."

"Godzilla was the most masterful of all dinosaur movies because it made you believe it was really happening."

"As you get older, the more complicated things get. It's almost therapeutic to be doing simple things with the kids."

"We have a real, immediate problem in that we have a gangster president who thinks he can do any-thing he wants … the problem is, if he actually gets away with it, then we all have a problem. The gall of the people around him who actually defend him, these Republicans, is appalling, and we must do something about it."

"You need somebody who’s strong enough to outmouth him – because that’s all he is, mouth – and smart enough and well-informed enough in a debate, say, to override all that nonsense that he does, be-cause basically it’s just name-calling. He has no substance. I don’t know how people fall for it. He’s just a big blowhard. But it ain’t over till it’s over as far as I’m concerned with a guy like him because he’s a dirty player."

"Rupert Murdoch became a citizen of this country; look what he’s contributed by this. This is what he’s going to leave. This is his legacy. It’s disgraceful. He’s cynical, amoral, but he has a responsibility. He came here as an immigrant, technically, and look what he did. You cannot justify having Fox News as a mouthpiece for the government. It’s wrong. It’s beyond disgusting."

"Trump is basic. He’s just a guy who just thinks he can rattle off his mouth and say anything. Well, I want to say the same thing to him: there are people who are going to say the same thing back to you, no matter who you are."

"I mean, a mob boss calls people ‘a rat’. That means you lied and somebody snitched on you, so you did commit the crime. So that’s interesting, and he makes mobsters look bad because there are mobsters who will shake your hand and keep their word. He can’t even do that."

"What bothers me is that there will be people in the future who see him as an example and they’ll be affected in some way, but they’ll be a lot smarter and have many more colours to their personality and be more mercurial and become someone with the same values as he has but able to get much further and do more damage as a despot. That’s my worry. There are people who look up to him: ‘I want to be like him.’ But they’ll do it much better and they’ll be more smart about it."

"If he had his way, we’d wind up in a very bad state in this country. I mean, the way I understand it, they laughed at Hitler. They all look funny. Hitler looked funny, Mussolini looked funny and other dictators and despots look funny."

"I’m older now and I’m just upset about what’s going on. When you see someone like [Trump] becoming president, I thought, well, OK, let’s see what he does – maybe he’ll change. But he just got worse. It showed me that he is a real racist. I thought maybe as a New Yorker he understands the diversity in the city but he’s as bad as I thought he was before – and much worse. It’s a shame. It’s a bad thing in this country."

"If you don't go, you'll never know."

"When I'm directing a great dramatic scene, part of me is saying, "Thank God I don't have to do that." Because I know how fucking hard it is to act. It's the middle of the night. It's freezing. You gotta do this scene. You gotta get it up to get to that point. And yet, as a director, you've got to get the actors to that point. It's hard either way."

"The hardest thing about being famous is that people are always nice to you. You're in a conversation and everybody's agreeing with what you're saying—even if you say something totally crazy. You need people who can tell you what you don't want to hear."

"I didn't have a problem with rejection, because when you go into an audition, you're rejected already. There are hundreds of other actors. You're behind the eight ball when you go in there."

"There's no such thing as not being afraid."

"Some people say, "New York's a great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there." I say that about other places."

"I like it when interviews are brief. Are we done yet?"

"He doesn’t care for those people, and the people who he pretends to care about are the people he has the most disdain for. They might like to tell themselves or to delude themselves, but he doesn’t care about them."

"It’s Shakespearean, the whole thing. You’ve got a lunatic saying things that people are trying to dance around. It’s appalling. He wants to be reelected. He doesn’t even care how many people die."

"Even gangsters have morals, and they have ethics. They have a code, and you know when you give somebody your word, it’s your word, because it’s all you have is your word. This guy, he doesn’t even know what that means."

"Give him a chance. That’s what I said right after he was elected. Give him a chance. I give everybody the benefit of the doubt. This guy has proven himself to be a total loser."

"We are in a moment in our lives, in this country, where this guy is like a gangster. We say over and over again: ‘This is terrible, we’re in a terrible situation, we’re in a terrible situation,’ and this guy just keeps going on and on and on without being stopped."

"There’s something more powerful than bombs, and that’s your vote. People must vote!"

"I’m gonna say one thing. Fuck Trump. It’s no longer down with Trump. It’s fuck Trump."