BRETT RATNER

I fear God and respect God and love God.

At the end of the day, audiences just want to laugh and be entertained. They want to escape from their reality, and that's why we make movies, to get people to escape from the realities.

Producing is making films without having to work sometimes. It's still making films, but it's a different job.

I've been a book collector since I was young, since I was a kid.

In this day and age, you need a lot of patience if you are in the movie business.

Movies are the biggest export in the world, the biggest American export. It influences people all over the world.

Everyone who knows me knows that I don't have a prejudiced bone in my body.

Listening is harder than just acting. Listening is the hardest part.

People can criticise all day long, I think I've proven myself, I think I deliver. And I agree, box office does not mean a movie's good, but I feel like I'm making good movies and I'm delivering in box office.

I learn more from the audience than I can from anybody else. Not from what they write on the scorecards, but how they respond to the movie while they're watching it - where they laugh and where they react.

When I was 13, Eddie Murphy was to me what Chris Tucker was to 13-year-olds when I made 'Rush Hour.' And 'Rush Hour' really came out of the fact that I grew up watching 'Beverly Hills Cop' and '48 Hrs.'

I love movie directors. I don't care who it is.

I went to a public high school and most of the comedy was coming from the black kids and the Asian kids and the Hispanic kids. And, the coolest kids to me where always the black kids. They were always fashion forward and they always dressed the coolest. They were always the best dancers, and just the coolest people.

I've watched 'Being There' over 50 times, and every time I watch it, I love every frame. I just wish I had directed it myself.

I'm not invited to the Vanity Fair dinner where they watch the Oscars - or even the Oscars themselves - so I sit at home and watch it with a bunch of close friends.

I never dreamed I would be producing the Oscars. That was a huge deal for me.

I don't have any regrets.

I love that feeling of going into a packed theater.

I'm not tied to budgets. I'm tied to the story that I want to tell, and how much it's going to cost is up to whatever the economic situation of the studio is.

I would love a robot butler.

When I do short films, I try to do something completely out of my comfort zone, out of my element.

I want to print books by people in the film industry.

My mom had me when she was 16, and I was an only child, which is probably why I received a lot of love and didn't miss that my father wasn't around.

I'm not going to turn down an Oscar, but I'm not strategizing for one.

When you're the director, you kinda do all the work.