James L. Brooks Quotes
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.
Quotes to Explore
-
Not to oversimplify it, somebody once said a good rule of thumb in interpreting a character is to find the good in the bad people that you portray and the bad in the good.
-
My nursery school did a production of 'The Three Little Pigs.' I played the third pig. When the wolf knocked on my door, I refused to get up and answer it because, to me, he was knocking the wrong way. I just lay there, snoring away on stage, fully immersed in my character. My dad turned to my mom and said: 'Dustin Hoffman.'
-
On the court, Jason Collins is not a huge basketball star, but he has already claimed his place in civil rights history as the first openly gay athlete to play in one of the four major U.S. sports leagues.
-
I love the idea of animation just because it removes the actor from the character, and you can be anything. I've been devouring 'Adventure Time' and 'Archer.' I'd love to get my hands dirty on either of those shows.
-
Escapism, we are led to believe, is evidence of a deficiency in character, a certain failure of temperament, and like so many -isms, it is to be strenuously avoided. 'How do you expect to get ahead?,' people ask. But the question altogether misses the point. The escapist doesn't want to get ahead. He simply wants to get away.
-
There's not a day in my life I'm not proud of being gay, but I just wasn't ready for that attention to be placed on it. I remember being on Oprah. Well, not on Oprah. Near Oprah. She started saying, 'Now, Nathan, you got all those girlie moves going down in 'The Birdcage,' where's all that coming from? You're so good at all that girlie stuff!'
-
I played a character in 'Ransom' who was as evil as they come.
-
Character is the indelible mark that determines the only true value of all people and all their work.
-
I'm a gay man who came out when I was 10 years old, and there's nothing in my life that I'm prouder of.
-
I always try to approach character first and foremost viscerally.
-
The unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree in the primeval forest which fell without being heard.
-
I kinda lose my mind in 'Fringe,' or at least my character does. Whenever I'm acting, I tend to accidentally become unable to switch off the character. I'm a little bit of a method actor, but without really wanting to be.
-
I have so many gay friends that I love.
-
Science, almost from its beginnings, has been truly international in character. National prejudices disappear completely in the scientist's search for truth.
-
Whether you need to like a character, I don't think that's necessary in order to portray him.
-
The destructive character lives from the feeling, not that life is worth living, but that suicide is not worth the trouble.
-
'Aladdin' was probably my favorite Disney animation when I was a kid. The animation was great and Robin Williams was unbelievable as the Genie. 'Aladdin' was an amazing adventure and the lead character was a hero for guys, which I loved. It wasn't a princess or a girl beating the odds; it was a street rat. That seemed really cool to me.
-
Most of the names in my books have secondary meaning. Sometimes they foreshadow; sometimes they tell you about the character's origin or back story.
-
I have this part in myself that sometimes gets me into situations that can never end well, just because I want to prove to myself that I'm no good.
-
The speed of communication, the speed of information transfer, the cheapness of communication, the ease of moving things around the world are a difference in kind as well as degree.
-
Write what you love. Love will hold you through the hard times and hold the world during the good times.
-
Social Security is meant to be - to make sure that no one who's worked hard and played by the rules and paid into the system grows old in poverty in America.
-
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.
