"When you're young, you're always wondering when you're actually going to feel like a grownup. And I think you probably fear it, in a sense, too. There's a danger to feeling like an adult... like this whimsical kid in you is going to die or something. And then all of a sudden, one day you kind of feel like an adult and it's really nice."

"I still, at hotel rooms, I do this one sort of not-so-cool thing: continually shoving my room service tray in front of someone else's door. Because I don't want the remnants. I don't want to be caught, like, being like the pig that I was at two in the morning."

"When I did 'E.T.,' it sort of solidified the only family I know are these film crews. These gypsies. These filmmakers. That was the solidification and the clicking revelations of 'This is what I want to do with my life and this is where I'm going to survive.'"

"You can't live your life blaming your failures on your parents and what they did or didn't do for you. You're dealt the cards that you're dealt. I realised it was a waste of time to be angry at my parents and feel sorry for myself."

"In this business, until you're known as a monster you're not a star."

"When from our better selves we have too long been parted by the hurrying world, and droop. Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired, how gracious, how benign is solitude."

"When Thomas Edison worked late into the night on the electric light, he had to do it by gas lamp or candle. I'm sure it made the work seem that much more urgent."

"Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions."