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
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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.
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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.'
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!'
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I played a character in 'Ransom' who was as evil as they come.
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Character is the indelible mark that determines the only true value of all people and all their work.
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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.
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I always try to approach character first and foremost viscerally.
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The unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree in the primeval forest which fell without being heard.
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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.
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I have so many gay friends that I love.
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Science, almost from its beginnings, has been truly international in character. National prejudices disappear completely in the scientist's search for truth.
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Whether you need to like a character, I don't think that's necessary in order to portray him.
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The destructive character lives from the feeling, not that life is worth living, but that suicide is not worth the trouble.
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'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.
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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.
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I do love the clothes on 'Mad Men' because my character has been so elegant and I would never have had access to these clothes. I think Janie Bryant is a costume designing genius. They'll call and tell me, 'It will only take an hour,' and I'm like, 'I will try on the whole truck!'
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Money is not a measure of a man's character or success in the arena of public service.
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I preach there are all kinds of truth, your truth and somebody else's. But behind all of them there is only one truth and that is that there's no truth.
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I'll take fifty percent efficiency to get one hundred percent loyalty.
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The Third Quartet I made the instruments in pairs - Two different pairs - Violin and viola, and violin and cello. They played very different things from each other all through the whole piece.
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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.
