James L. Brooks Quotes

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James L. Brooks

Profession : Producer

Birth : May 9, 1940

I always fight hard to push a movie to the point where it pulls me.

James L. Brooks

Linking up the things you were with the things you become is what growing up is.

James L. Brooks

I have a rule in research: The third time you hear something, it's generally true.

James L. Brooks

I laugh every day. There are days when my laughs are pretty hollow. Dust comes out of your mouth, and your bones make a funny sound. But I'm laughing.

James L. Brooks

I always loved writing, but never considered that I could do it professionally.

James L. Brooks

I always think a successful television series is the best job because it gives you community, it doesn't demand temporary insanity the way movies do, and you can be almost a normal person.

James L. Brooks

I came to 20th Century Fox to do movies, and then they started a network, and they asked me to do a show as part of their starting what became the Fox network.

James L. Brooks

When you work alongside somebody day in and day out, the relationships tend to be wonderful: they're lifelong.

James L. Brooks

I think television keeps on being a place where writers can go, and if they're successful, they can have their way, and they can have creative freedom.

James L. Brooks

I was only in college, unfortunately, for, um, a year. I think my major was public relations, and I had no idea what it meant except it seemed maybe attainable.

James L. Brooks

Working on any show that works is the best job you can possibly have in any area of the business. You've got so much going for you, a good community, everybody's hanging together, and you get to do it every week.

James L. Brooks

That's the great thing about a series: you're driving to work, and you have an idea for a story for your characters, and you can go into work, and it's gonna be a television show. I mean that's what's great about the job.

James L. Brooks

I was raised primarily by women. I had a mother who almost killed herself to survive, I had a sister who was eight years older who was like a second mother, and my mother had two sisters. In the environment I grew up in, I heard a lot of female perspectives.

James L. Brooks

I don't know whether I have ideas all the time. I think I'm curious about things all the time; I think I'm always curious, and I think I'm always interested in whatever passes by, and I know I tend to think about things, and I tend to talk about things, and sometimes that takes root and gives me something to chase.

James L. Brooks

I always think that the deal, once I do the script, sort of the experience I go through writing, which is everything you can imagine, but I always think it's the one thing I can do when I'm directing is say is that it's all about the actors, that I can say, 'We're all here to serve the actors.'

James L. Brooks

You know you're in love when you're more yourself than you ever imagined possible.

James L. Brooks

I saw 'Annie Hall' with a group of people working in comedy and television. We were all stunned. Stunned. It was like watching a spaceship land. That something that funny could also be that beautiful.

James L. Brooks

Nothing is a matter of course when you get to do your own thing. It's always a gift that can stop giving and probably will.

James L. Brooks

A television job that's working is the best job in the world.

James L. Brooks

I think you always want to have a project where it's not about you: where you're serving it. Where it has needs, and you're trying to meet those needs, so you're trying to lift it out of you and put it out there and then say to people, 'Hey, I think that's it; let's head that way.'

James L. Brooks