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

- James L. Brooks

A lot of things just aren't true any more.

- James L. Brooks

Once you read the script, it's the only way it can be.

- James L. Brooks

[Screenwriting] is no more complicated than old French torture chambers, I think. It's about as simple as that.

- James L. Brooks

I took some time out for life.

- James L. Brooks

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

- James L. Brooks

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.

- James L. Brooks

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.

- James L. Brooks

The thing that usually gets me through the writing is that my feelings of wretched inadequacy are irregularly punctuated by brief flashes of omnipote…

- James L. Brooks