Breakthroughs, in art, in culture, in personality, come when tackling the unexpected.

Everything can be undone, including success.

[On filmmaking:] Cardinal rule: It's a youth business.

The key to moving a maybe to a yes is to make the buyer feel as though other buyers have already said yes. ... It helps if it's true, but it never is. No one wants to be the first yes. Why is this? I don't know, but I think it's anthropological.

My goal has been to learn how to get movies made without losing sight of the reasons I began. I have had to learn to recognize the insidious nature of the beast without becoming one.

What turns a work crisis into a life crisis is the infusion of dread.

To whom one reports is a unit of measure. It measures the exact distance between the player and the center of power. It is the closest we can get to a calibrated answer to the question 'How big am I?' More than the size of an executive's office or even his title, which no one remembers anyway, the fewer people between the player and a 'yes,' the more powerful he is.