George Stevens

“Three takes. You're either going to get it, or you're not going to get it. There's no use persisting; it just had to work that way.”

“For me it's absolutely necessary to start from the very beginning. I can't think of coming and contributing something anywhere along the line other than the very start.”

“I thought I might say something to newsmen that could be turned into a scandal.”

“It's like trying to be a traffic cop and write a poem at the same time. You need an executive head to handle all the vast paraphernalia of moviemaking. You need another, more sensitive head to get the delicate human emotional values you are trying to put on film.”

“I personally like to see films that are the work of as singular a consciousness as possible.”

“I was fascinated by all of it. The sounds of the theater and the audience, their rapture when a play took over and moved them and held them quietly... When the audience was truly moved, it was absolutely quiet. They were in a communion because they were learning the truth about themselves.”

“When you feel an audience engaged and surprised and enthusiastic, reacting to what you've planned, that is the reward. It's better than the Emmys.”

“What people see the first family do has an effect. And from a slightly different aspect, I think that family living in the White House is going to have a profound effect on many Americans.”

“I was on a picture for four or five days, had an opportunity to be on a set, and the assistant cameraman kept showing me things. One day I climbed the fence, knowing they needed an assistant cameraman. A couple of days later, I was one. The first day or two, it was pretty disastrous, but I knew something about photography, and I caught on quick.”

“In most Westerns, you know, people are shooting off guns all the time until you don't even notice it anymore.”

“The camera is not the instrument. People are always the instrument.”

“Only the picture matters. It's what goes on the screen that counts.”

“Nothing is more pleasant for me than to be on location in the country that I love, in any of our western landscapes, being out there with a camp outfit and a film company.”

“In my mid-20s, I was directing episodes of 'Alfred Hitchcock' and 'Peter Gunn.' I was pretty much on course and - as I sometimes joke - was prepared to devote my life to become the second best film director in my family.”

“I had done some work when I was starting in with photography on westerns, and photographing them was the greatest pleasure I had. If I was ever qualified for anything, it would have had to do with making westerns. But as I started working on pictures with people like Katharine Hepburn, I got further away from the thing I really liked to do.”

“I'm interested in all the new ideas, such as 3-D and widescreen, but I don't believe the technical method of presentation is the real important thing.”

“I see myself capable of arrogance and brutality... That's a fierce thing, to discover within yourself that which you despise the most in others.”

“The audience too should be respected by being presented with a film as they remember it, and for those who have not seen it, as it was intended to be seen. Anything less is a degradation of the film and its audience.”