The most positive step is to try to expand the employment base by making it, if not economically friendly, at least not economically disastrous, for studios to take on deficits.

It's show business. No show, no business.

I think most people don't react well to being screamed at. It's counterproductive.

The story drove the book. That had a very seminal effect on the way I saw writing and storytelling. If you can set a character in a story that is compelling and has a backbone, you draw people in.

I get bored with establishing shots of people getting out of cars and walking into buildings, getting into elevators and then 45 seconds later they have a line.

It was like in Samoa when they'd put up a movie screen on the beach and show movies and the locals would run behind the sheet to see where the people went. It was pretty grim.

And the consumer doesn't care. They don't watch networks, they watch TV shows.

I try to just communicate what I want done as clearly and simply as possible.

People recognize certain things, like 'D' means 'this dialogue stinks.' We're dealing with shows that are written here, shot in New York and posted back here. Accurate communication is a necessity.

Advertising is the art of the tiny. You have to tell a complete a story and deliver a complete message in a very encapsulated form. It disciplines you to cut away extraneous information.

I was raised not to be rude, but I also try to get the best work out of people.

Today I will exercise to build the power of my love.

You have to have faith if you want to make it out of the woods. Faith is your only hope for deliverance.

I am so often the architect of my own pain and the engineer of my own failures.

I never hesitate to tell a man that I am bullish or bearish. But I do not tell people to buy or sell any particular stock. In a bear market all stocks go down and in a bull market they go up.

When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something... but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, that is when we join the fashionable madmen.

Without passion, men are not willing to pay any price or bear any burden to set the captives free.

Never have I met a person doing terrible things who would meet my own eyes peacefully. To gaze into another person's face is to do two things: to recognize their humanity, and to assert your own.

If it's a story that I feel is exciting and necessary, those are really motivating factors for me.

Our minds want clothes as much as our bodies.

It's funny, you make friends and you lose friends when you're making a movie.