Quotes from James L. Brooks

It's craziness to see yourself as damaged goods, so I was the goofy kid who'd stop a strange adult and say, 'Do you know how to get to Palm Avenue?' They'd say no, and I'd say, 'You go two blocks and turn right. You can't miss it.'

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.

I took some time out for life.

I love romantic comedy, but I think you have to have another idea that you're chasing along with romantic comedy.

Honey, lately your low self-esteem is just good common sense

I feel like I'm slipping but do people who are actually slipping feel that way or is it always the really good people who are moving up who invariably think they're slipping because their standards are so high?" Arron Altman Broadcast News 1987

I feel like I'm slipping but do people who are actually slipping feel that way or is it always the really good people who are moving up who invariably think they're slipping because their standards are so high?

I always believe you can't kill good movies, because somebody's in some room and will die unless it gets made.

Great things that can happen when you're doing a movie.

I could see no position to say, 'I'm going to make a living as a writer.' But I went to classes for it; I read every play in 'Theater' magazine. I saw the second acts of everything on Broadway - I had a job as a CBS usher in New York City, and on my way home every night, I'd see what shows I could get into.

When it comes to being confused about what to do about life, that's been me and will always be me.

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.

I took some time out for life.

Things get very distorted when you do a movie, weirdly so.

If you write about a process you're about to go through, market research, and you go through it, and it doesn't echo what you've written about, you've failed.

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.

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

I had no road map for fatherhood; I had no personal history to draw from.

I've done it with Broadcast News-where there was no finish line, there was no agenda that I had to move all the characters to this point, that I was sort of open to what happens.

'Fargo,' man, with so many actors playing so many great characters, and then they do another season, and it changes all over again? It's wild.

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.

It never stops, accepting that fact is difficult. I took some time out for life.

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

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.'