John Zimmer Quotes

The audience only pays attention as long as you know where you are going.

No one ever complains about a speech being too short!

So many people are accustomed to written information that you really have to have a few more bells and whistles in this day and age.

Novelists want to be published and need a publisher to decide to print 20,000 copies. So you need to entertain on some level. I want to reach out and connect.

My movies are, more or less, very short. I'm terrified of boring an audience.

You have to captivate and entertain if you want your message to get across.

The issue is: how do you engage the audience? And one of the things I talk to our communicators about is: The outline is great; the stories are great. But how do you engage them? How do you make it feel like we are on a journey, not you are just up there giving me information.

I can think of nothing that an audience won't understand. The only problem is to interest them; once they are interested, they understand anything in the world.

I would rather speak to 500 men that would give me their attention that to 100,000 that would not.

A documentary film is a great way of helping people understand because, somehow, when one is able to see the people involved, it lends a certain immediacy and understanding that is hard to get on the page.

You don't want to bash viewers over the head with a blunt message or lecture them - they'd soon get bored with that.

If you come across as boring or monotone, you're going to lose your audience.

If you want to convey a message, you must do so in an enjoyable format.

A speaker who does not strike oil in ten minutes should stop boring.

The most important thing to remember is you must know your audience.

When you show up to speak publically, you have to show up to give. You always know the ones who do and the ones who don't.

Never try to convey your idea to the audience - it is a thankless and senseless task. Show them life, and they'll find within themselves the means to assess and appreciate it.

The goal of effective communication should be for listeners to say, 'Me, too!' versus 'So what?'

There is only one excuse for a speaker's asking the attention of his audience: he must have either truth or entertainment for them.

That's the secret: be interesting. If you can't be interesting, shut up. There's nothing wrong with silence.

No matter how tight the shot is, if I'm narrating it too much, there's a barrier between you and the experience, because the process of reading a book, or watching a movie, or watching a play is that you're watching a dream.

Given the choice between trivial material brilliantly told versus profound material badly told, an audience will always choose the trivial told brilliantly.

If people don't want to listen to you, what makes you think they want to hear from your sweater?

People don't listen, they just wait for their turn to talk.

Some people would find just the rhythm of my films alone to be a nightmare; they'd probably just fall asleep because they want something quicker. Other people fall into it and it works for them like a dream.