Quotes from Brian Grazer

"No" is just a moment in time.

A movie has to get good reviews, high grosses - it has to beat expectations. The same thing with television and the ratings. But being curious isn't like that. It's not a public thing. It's private, and the test is a private one. You have to be on your toes.

No one in Hollywood really knows what a good idea is before a movie hits the screens. We only know if it's a good idea after it's done.

I don't keep a list of people I want to talk to. It's organic. But I'd like to interview Tom Brady. Someday I'd love to meet Vladimir Putin. I'd ask him how he sees the landscape of the world, what could make it better, how that could be done.

I probably should have a brand, but I think you can't get the best artists to work for you if you're branded. I get the trade-off, and I really would like to be more famous for my work, get more credit for my achievements.

In Hollywood, people tend to have the same sensibilities, the same taste and values, and I didn't want to spend my life that way. I wanted to have a bigger, more interesting life.

Curiosity and creating ideas ironically are both democratized; they cost no money, anyone can do them, and it's up the individual and the force of their personality to give life to them.

Where do I get the confidence to be different? A lot of it comes from curiosity. I spent years as a young man trying to understand the business I'm in. I have spent decades staying connected to how the rest of the world works.

I like learning stuff. The more information you can get about a person or a subject, the more you can pour into a potential project. I made a decision to do different things. I want to do things that have a better chance of being thought of as original. I do everything I can to disrupt my comfort zone.

They say that life is tough enough. But I guess I like to make things difficult on myself, because I do that all the time. Every day and on purpose. That's because I believe in disrupting my comfort zone.

Being interested in other fields and meeting experts outside entertainment - whether it's a two-hour conversation with John Nash that turns into 'A Beautiful Mind' or talking to people in architecture or fashion, CIA directors or Nobel laureates - has given me a better sense of which ideas feel authentic and new.

It's a simple quality of human nature that people prefer to choose to do things rather than be ordered to do them. In fact, as soon as you tell me I have to do something - give a speech, attend a banquet, go to Cannes - I immediately start looking for ways to avoid doing it.

I think that we all absolutely have curiosity. It brings about knowledge. It's energizing. It's spiritually empowering. It makes us more interesting as people.

You can get good at finding access in the entertainment business. But the ideas, the narratives themselves, they are the only things that are going to be of any value.

Nothing to me is unexpected. No disappointment is unexpected - whether it's movies or people or relationships. I'm always ready for the punch directly between the eyes. So I get hurt, but I never get hurt. Happens all the time.

Asking for people's help - rather than directing it - is almost always the smart way of doing things, regardless of the stakes.

I went to USC. I wasn't a rich kid or anything like that, so I had to get a scholarship. Went to USC; my first year, I took 26 units, so I got to have a nickname. Everyone goes, 'There's 26.' So I had a nickname. Having a nickname is a good thing because then you start to get popular, and you keep that going.

My world was small growing up. I never really left the three-mile radius of my tiny neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley.

Everybody in Hollywood has to beat the 'no' - and if you write code in Silicon Valley, or if you design cars in Detroit, if you manage hedge funds in Lower Manhattan, you also have to learn to beat the 'no.'

I find rejection or failure to be a really interesting and valuable experience.

The hair is part of my image, part of my persona. And the hair is no accident: I have to gel it vertical every single morning.

The physical effort of reading drains some of the pleasure I might take from whatever I'm reading.

I worked for a couple of screamers in my early days in Hollywood. I don't like being screamed at, and I am not myself a screamer.

There is evidence that people do want to watch shows back to back - that's why DVR use is so high. When you're able to DVR something, people will watch more than one episode.