“I dream for a living.”
— Steven Spielberg
Spielberg's remark in a 1985 Time magazine interview, when asked how he'd describe his job.
People asked me what I do for work. I could have said I direct movies. I could have listed my credits. But the truth is simpler than that. In 1958 I was a 12-year-old in Phoenix with an 8mm camera, filming toy trains. In 1975 I was hiding a broken shark from the camera. In 1993 I was crying in a field in Krakow. The medium changed, the budgets grew, but the core never shifted. I make up worlds and put them on screen. If you have something that makes you lose track of time, that is not a hobby. That is your life telling you what to do.