Explore Quotes by James L. Brooks

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

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

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.'

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

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

We can go years without making a picture, and that's fine.

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

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.

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.

A television job that's working is the best job in the world.

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

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

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'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.

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.

I'm big on research.

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

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.

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

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.