Quotes from James L. Brooks

What does it mean for an actor to make a part his own? It means that he takes on what you had intended and starts to put in his own stuff so that it becomes something that could only happen if he played it.

You become so obsessed, and that's not a bad thing for a movie. Serve it with that sense that it's the whole world.

The fact is that television, even before the movies, offered the chance to control our work and to get to do it again when we did something right. So television has always been better to writers than any other medium for a long time.

I was at CBS News on a fluke. I replaced somebody who was on vacation. I worked as a copy boy, then became a news writer.

Media reporting denied privacy to anybody doing what I do for a living. It was no longer possible to work on your picture in privacy.

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.

Watching people see your picture for the first time is such a public agony.

When I wrote a gay character, I spent six months asking questions I've never asked a gay friend, the questions you don't ask just because you don't have the right to do it.

Making an authentic film about anything is difficult.

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

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