James L. Brooks

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

I always think a successful television series is the best job because it gives you community, it doesn't demand temporary insanity the way movies do, and you can be almost a normal person.

Working on any show that works is the best job you can possibly have in any area of the business. You've got so much going for you, a good community, everybody's hanging together, and you get to do it every week.

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

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

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

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

Fargo,' man, with so many actors playing so many great characters, and then they do another season, and it changes all over again? It's wild.

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.

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

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.

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.