The true art of filmmaking is in making the impossible seem effortless.

The idea of adventure is what drives me as a filmmaker.

You have to be willing to take risks, even when everyone else is telling you it’s a bad idea.

Hate is a disease, and in 1930 I became sick with hatred.

I’m interested in telling stories about what it means to be human.

NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Where else but in Texas would men set up to administer space?

You learn more from your failures than you do from your successes.

A movie isn’t just a product; it’s an emotional journey.

Technology is what enables you to make a film bigger, more immersive, and more dynamic.

I lived in a small town. It was 2,000 people in Canada. A little river that went through it and we swam in the – you know, there was a lot of water around. Niagara Falls was about four or five miles away.

If it was up to the studio, everything would be shot with a camcorder.

The greatest challenge in filmmaking is getting people to understand your vision.

My job as a filmmaker is to create a world that’s believable enough for the audience to get lost in.

Climate change is critical to me because I’m a parent; I feel a sense of responsibility to the future. I’m not going to be around to see its worst effects, which are going to be hitting in the 2030s, ’40s, ’50s, but my kids will.

God wears white flannels.

My mother was a housewife but she was also an artist. My father was an electrical engineer.

The characters in my films always reflect human vulnerability.

You’re only as good as the team that surrounds you.

The literature now is so opaque to the average person that you couldn’t take a science-fiction short story that’s published now and turn it into a movie. There’d be way too much ground work you’d have to lay. It’s OK to have detail and density, but if you rely on being a lifelong science-fiction fan to understand what the story is about, then it’s not going to translate to a broader audience.

Nature’s not our enemy, it’s our sustenance; and we need it – and we need nature healthy for us to be healthy and to survive long term.

I like the evening in India, the one magic moment when the sun balances on the rim of the world, and the hush descends, and ten thousand civil servants drift homeward on a river of bicycles, brooding on the Lord Krishna and the cost of living.

What I’ve learned is that technology is nothing if you don’t have an emotional connection to what you’re doing.

I want my movies to stand the test of time, not just be a commercial success for a year or two.

So my message is in whichever realm, be it going into space or going into the deep sea, you have to balance the yin and yang of caution and boldness, risk aversion and risk taking, fear and fearlessness. No great accomplishment takes place, whether it be a movie or a deep ocean expedition, or a space mission, without a kind of dynamic equipoise between the two. Luck is not a factor. Hope is not a strategy. Fear is not an option

Writing a screenplay, for me, is like juggling. It’s like, how many balls can you get in the air at once? All those ideas have to float out there to a certain point, and then they’ll crystallize into a pattern.

I love short trips to New York; to me it is the finest three-day town on earth.

We’re not creating a movie; we’re creating an experience.

There’s no limit to what you can accomplish if you’re not worried about who gets the credit.

All my films are love stories.

I guess Titanic because it made the most money. No, I’m kidding. I don’t really have a favorite. Maybe Terminator because that was the film that was the first one back when I was essentially a truck driver.

Any direct experience that I have with indigenous peoples and their plights may feed into the nature of the story I choose to tell. In fact, it almost certainly will.

Movies are like an ocean. They’re a mass of water, and you have to navigate through it with a good script and a great cast.

Sometimes a failure is the best thing that could happen because it pushes you to rethink everything.

James Cameron doesn’t do what James Cameron does for James Cameron. James Cameron does what James Cameron does because James Cameron is… James Cameron.

I dreamed I was a soldier who could bring peace. Sooner or later, though, you always have to wake up.

There is a hugely underserved population out there… those who are the least capable of paying pay the highest.

Every movie I make, I learn something.

Logan Cale: If I just had my ass handed to me by a size three, I’d be inclined to mind my own business.

I had read tons of science fiction. I was fascinated by other worlds, other environments. For me, it was fantasy, but it was not fantasy in the sense of pure escapism.

The universe is like a giant bank vault lock, where the tumblers are constantly moving and once in a while the tumblers line up and you have to listen for the click. So you must be prepared in that moment to step through the door.

What are you gonna do, talk the alien to death?

The challenge is to make something that has never been done before, and to do it in a way that feels authentic.

I came across time for you, Sarah. I love you. I always have.” Kyle Reese in The Terminator.

A director’s job is to make something happen and it doesn’t happen by itself. So you wheedle, you cajole, you flatter people, you tell them what needs to be done. And if you don’t bring a passion and an intensity to it, you shouldn’t be doing it.

Go home, pick up your video camera, and make a film.

Inspiration can hit you in the head at any time in any context. It could happen in a conversation. Talking to someone at a party, you can get an idea. But you’ve got to remember those inspirations.

There’s a very fine line between clever and stupid.

When i was lying in the V.A. hospital with a big hole blown through the middle of my life, i started having these dreams of flying. I was free. But sooner or later, you always have to wake up.

It’s about human imagination and curiosity. What’s out there? What’s in the great beyond? What exists at levels we can’t see with our five senses?

I believe 3D is inevitable because it’s about aligning our entertainment systems to our sensory system. We all have two eyes; we all see the world in 3D. And it’s natural for us to want our entertainment in 3D as well. It’s just getting the technology – it’s really more the business model than the technology piece. We’ve solved the technology.

Film is about taking the audience to a place they’ve never been before, and showing them something they’ve never seen.

I love it when I have a nightmare to me that means I got my money’s worth out of that eight hours.

Here’s my philosophy in life: If there’s a fire, you put it out. If there’s a flood, you fill sandbags and you build a dike. You roll up your sleeves and you get to work.

Your only competitors are your past achievements.

I’m a storyteller; that’s what exploration really is all about. Going to places where others haven’t been and returning to tell a story they haven’t heard before.

The most personal thing you can do is to make something that is based on your own experience.

When the ship docks, I’m getting off with you. This is crazy. I know it doesn’t make any sense, that’s why I trust it.

Sometimes your whole life boils down to one insane move.

I am king of the world!

The film industry is about saying ‘no’ to people, and inherently you cannot take ‘no’ for an answer.

I love technology and I love the idea of creating things that seem impossible.

Rose: But now you know there was a man named Jack Dawson and that he saved me… in every way that a person can be saved.

People call me a perfectionist, but I’m not. I’m a rightist. I do something until it’s right, and then I move on to the next thing.

Failure is an option, fear is not.

I watched a couple of really bad directors work, and I saw how they completely botched it up and missed the visual opportunities of the scene when we had put things in front of them as opportunities. Set pieces, props and so on.

I never viewed myself as a filmmaker, I was a storyteller.

Jack: Where to, Miss? Rose: To the stars.

The nation that leads in renewable energy will be the nation that leads the world.

The magic doesn’t come from within the director’s mind, it comes from within the hearts of the actors.

You don’t make movies for yourself. You make movies for the audience.

A woman’s heart is an ocean of deep secrets.

If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success.

The future is not set. There is no fate but what we make.

There are many talented people who haven’t fulfilled their dreams because they over thought it, or they were too cautious, and were unwilling to make the leap of faith.

The best way to predict the future is to create it.

Curiosity is the most powerful thing you own.

Imagination is a force that can actually manifest a reality.Don’t put limitations on yourself.Others will do that for you.

Hope is not a strategy. Luck is not a factor. Fear is not an option.

Pick up a camera. Shoot something. No matter how small, no matter how cheesy, no matter whether your friends and your sister star in it. Put your name on it as director. Now you’re a director. Everything after that you’re just negotiating your budget and your fee.