Jonathan Demme Quotes

I approach any collaboration I do differently.

Almost always, great new ideas don't emerge from within a single person or function, but at the intersection of functions or people that have never met before.

If you have somebody who's brilliant and highly creative with a different point of view than you have, and a very different intellectual background, great things can happen.

Creative collaboration is awesome.

Synergy is what happens when one plus one equals ten or a hundred or even a thousand! It's the profound result when two or more respectful human beings determine to go beyond their preconceived ideas to meet a great challenge.

Working at Pixar you learn the really honest, hard way of making a great movie, which is to surround yourself with people who are much smarter than you, much more talented than you, and incite constructive criticism; you'll get a much better movie out of it.

Magicians are typically introverted; they don't tend to work with others, but I work with software programmers, composers, designers, so it's a very diverse group and the result is always more interesting than something I could have done by myself.

I'm very humble in terms of knowing that television is an extraordinary collaborative medium and that one person alone cannot make a great TV show.

But I'm blessed to work with great people. I collaborate with brilliant stylists both here and in Paris. I work with a great design team. I really allow everyone to bring their ideas. I almost rely on them to inspire me.

The great fun for me is these collaborators. I'm nothing by myself. Being with these people, whether it's the 'Homeland' cast or stage collaborators, they make you everything you are. They make you come to work. They make you be alive.

One of the things that I think makes me successful is the way in which I collaborate with others. In my opinion, nothing great is ever the product of one mind. It's always a consequence of some sort of self-critical collaboration.

Basically, the way I do it is I get to work with a bunch of people; get a bunch of great people together, and you'll be able to get something cool on the other side.

It's joyful in that there's another point of view on all things, you know, not just mine. That's why I like to write and collaborate with people. There's another point of view, and when those two things come together, and people work at it really hard, they get something that is the whole is more than the sum of - is that how you say that?

One of the things that is particularly precious about working at Apple is that many of us on the design team have worked together for 15-plus years, and there's a wonderful thing about learning as a group. A fundamental part of that is making mistakes together.

For me, it's not about being the best designer. I'm interested in being the best partner. The best collaborator.

The thing I like to stress about TV is that it's a team exercise. You really can't have too much of an ego.

It's really lonely trying to build something by yourself. It's good to have thought partners to bounce ideas off of.

The whole point of collaboration is that you give and take from each other, and that's how you create things that are totally new.

We gotta bring new ideas to the table and empower each other.

That's what's so wonderful about collaborating: your idea can explode and become something else.

For me, self-gratification eventually took a backseat to trying to do something collaborative with other people, to trying to make something new.

The reward of a successful collaboration is a thing that cannot be produced by either of the parties working alone. It is akin to the benefits of sex with a partner, as opposed to masturbation. The latter is fun, but you show me anyone who has gotten a baby from playing with him or herself, and I'll show you an ugly baby, with just a whole bunch of knuckles.

If I collaborate with people, ideas...they take interesting turns and twists, and I'm excited for that and that process and excited to see what we come up with.

To create something new is both thrilling and excruciating at the same time. It's great to have all these choices in front of you, and to have the writers in the room so you know exactly what they meant. But the downside is you want so badly not to screw it up!

I think the best work flows out of a collaborative environment.