Quotes from James Cameron

I was always fascinated by engineering. Maybe it was an attempt maybe to get my father's respect or interest, or maybe it was just a genetic love of technology, but I was always trying to build things.

It was long ago in my life as a simple reporter that I decided that facts must never get in the way of truth.

I had pictured myself as a filmmaker but I had never pictured myself as a director if that makes any sense at all.

I blame it on Walt Disney, where animals are given human qualities. People don't understand that a wild animal is not something that is nice to pat. It can seriously harm you.

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

You know, in the film making business no one ever gives you anything.

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

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

I mean, you have to be able - you have to have made the commitment within yourself to do whatever it takes to get the job done and to try to inspire other people to do it, because obviously the first rule is you can't do it by yourself.

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.

It took me a long time to realize that you have to have a bit of an interlanguage with actors. You have to give them something that they can act with.

People think that what I see diving must drive what I put into films, but that isn't really the case. When I am making a Hollywood production, I am telling a different kind of story. Of course, if I see something interesting that works, we will look at it, but they are different things.

I do an awful lot of scuba diving. I love to be on the ocean, under the ocean. I live next to the ocean.

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

I don't use film cameras. I don't do visual effects the same way. We don't use miniature models; it's all CG now, creating worlds in CG. It's a completely different toolset. But the rules of storytelling are the same.

So much of literary sci-fi is about creating worlds that are rich and detailed and make sense at a social level. We'll create a world for people and then later present a narrative in that world.

It'll be all of our efforts together. It won't won't ever be exactly the way I imagined it. And that is, I think, an important lesson as well, is that in any group enterprise it's going to be the sum total of the group.

You don't rest well as long as you're seeking vengeance. I feel sad justice wasn't done, but it's time to move on and sleep well.

I always do makeup touch-ups myself, especially for blood, wounds, and dirt. It saves so much time.

All my films are love stories.

I feed on other people's creativity, photographers, artists of every kind. Sometimes a feeling that you get listening to a song can be so powerful. I've wanted to write whole scripts around what I felt just listening to a piece of music. I think music is important, and surrounding your visual field with stimulating things.

Building upon the world we created with 'Avatar' has been a rare and incredibly rewarding experience. In writing the new films, I've come to realize that 'Avatar's world, story and characters have become even richer than I anticipated, and it became apparent that two films would not be enough to capture everything I wanted to put on screen.

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

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.