Quotes from Ryan Murphy

I had a very rocky, difficult, emotional childhood with my parents.

I started off as a journalist when I was young and I did not get paid unless I wrote three stories a day.

It's interesting when women direct. The work is better. They ask more people to participate.

I wanted to create a culture that allowed my children to see the world differently, if only from a strictly visual perspective: to have a child see a room where half of the people are women and minorities is so powerful. I think everyone wants for their children a world that's better than the one they came up in.

What I'm interested in doing now is to go and give voices that are not being heard a platform and to sort of bring people into people's homes that you think you may hate or despise.

I'll ask the writers' room who they voted for Emmy awards, but I'll never ask who they voted for president.

I think John Landgraf sees things in the same way I do. We see eye to eye on a lot.

When I was starting out in Hollywood, everything was such a battle.

I'm passionate about actors, and I'm passionate about showing actors in different lights.

I love 'Girls' on HBO because it's brave and cool.

All the big successes of my career have been ideas that, on paper, you think, 'Well nobody's going to go for this because that genre is so dead.'

Joan Crawford and Bette Davis are larger than life. They just are. They sucked all the oxygen out of a room: they're icons; they loom large in our imaginations. But the truth of the matter is both women were diminutive.

When I got my overall deal at Fox, I got amazing bosses in John Landgraf and Dana Walden and Peter Rice. For the first time ever, they said, 'Don't change who you are; be who you are. And write something you want to watch.' That thing was 'Glee,' and it took off from there.

I think that the work that Bette Davis and Joan Crawford did was truly extraordinary, and that's their legacy. Not the other petty stuff.

I would much rather have watched Jill Clayburgh in 'An Unmarried Woman' than 'Star Wars.' Even though I saw that movie when I was 11, I related emotionally to being left and thrown in a trash can on the side of the road. Her damage - I got it. I didn't understand Han Solo at all.

I think when you take the big swings - and I've done plenty of big swings that I was told were never going to work - those are always the things that break through.

I feel every day that everything I create - everything I do - I want it to be a risk. I think when you take the big swings - and I've done plenty of big swings that I was told were never going to work - those are always the things that break through.

I've always been sort of, 'I love it,' or, 'I hate it,' and I think, as a result, I've always been a polarizing person. You either love me or you hate me. There's not a lot of 'Hmmm.'

It's a weird thing, my shows. I don't know how to describe it, but I feel because I go about the casting process so slowly that it does feel like an instant family.

I only wrote two fan letters in my life. One was to Bette Davis. And one was to Ron Palillo, who played Horshack on 'Welcome Back, Kotter.' And Ron did not write me back, but Bette Davis did.

I loved musicals, and I loved Barbra Streisand, and I loved Louis Malle. My tastes were very bizarre, but the thing they all had in common is that they took me out of my life and made me feel something.

I'm very black and white about what I like or don't like, and I've always been that way.

I love Sarah Jessica Parker; I've worked with her. I think she's amazing... She's a great producer and has a great business acumen.

All the things I have done at one point or another have fallen out of fashion, and there's nothing better than trying to bring something back to life.