Quotes from James L. Brooks

I love bingeing. 'The Wire' was my first binge, and the thing about bingeing is, when you are doing four or five hours a day for a number of days, it becomes a literary experience, closer to reading.

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

If you ever catch a great boss, it's just such a rare thing, and it's amazing.

In my mind, if you write a comedy where human beings experience pain, you're just being realistic.

I had a marketing idea that everybody hated, decency is sexy.

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.'

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.

I love it if comedy reflects real life because to me it's more reassuring that we'll get through.

My greatest regret is that my mother died before I could help her materially.

Kids in general make things fresh and alive and they have this great appreciation for, Holy mackerel, we're making a movie!

Tone is up for grabs in what we do - what's the tone of the scene.

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

The remarkable thing about 9/11 was that journalism pretty much put down its badges. People didn't worry about reacting as human beings. People who weren't reporters reported. David Letterman was sort of a brilliant reporter for a second - but it was a way nobody had ever covered a story. They just presented what was inside themselves.

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

I'm big on research.

I'm a journalism junkie.

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.

I think you have a pact with an audience in every picture, and I think the pact is to try and be truthful and to be real.

With music, you can put sophisticated thoughts in a child's head - it gives you a whole new avenue to express ideas.

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.

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.

I worked for CBS News in the aftermath of all the greatness. I actually brought coffee to Edward R. Murrow.

I have a lot of nightmares.

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.