Brett Ratner Quotes

Some of the regrets I've had about my own career are things I have not done that I should have done. More than some of the things that I've done.

If I see someone I think is in a better position than me, it is better for me to give the ball. Now I shoot more at goal. When I was young, they sometimes said to me, 'You need to shoot more. You try to give it too much.' It is something that I learned. To try to take the best option.

The greatest choice we have is to think before we act and then take action toward our life goals every day. Our problems result not only from our lack of action, but from our action without thought.

Work hard. Think big. Listen well.

I don't think there is a role that I did twenty years ago that I couldn't do better now.

Usually, I'm pretty good about sorting through the options and then making decisions that I'm confident are the best decisions in that moment, given the information we have. But there are times where I think I wish I could have imagined a different level of insight.

I never went to college. I think about it a lot. I can't watch a game without thinking where I would have been if I had ga head and went to college and pursued my career.

If I look at the people that I look up to, a lot of them don't come to the forefront until their early to mid-30s. I think the most exciting roles are definitely yet to come.

Choice is the only tool we have that enables us to go from who we are today to who we want to be tomorrow.

But for me, to get the tattoo was part of moving into adulthood. Making a choice that is permanent and that I'll have to stick with.

I watched the Oscars, but there wasn't a side of me that was like "Oh, one day..." It was mostly "This is what I want to do, and how do I do it?" As soon as I decided that I was going to be an actor, for about five years after that, I just decided to not do much acting. It was like "Okay, this is what you're going to be later on."

There are a lot of decisions we pass up on because we think, "You know what? That's just going to build - you know, maybe that's going to build me and not build the ministry and what I'm trying to do." So we pass up on a lot of opportunities.

I try to let my decisions be guided not by what I think will succeed or fail, but what I'm going to learn from that process.

I believe that this life is all we have. I don't believe in anything after this, so I think the choices we make here are so important and the relationships we choose are crucial, especially in that time when we are developing ourselves and we're becoming adults.

I think you can be mature without being grown-up. You can also be grown-up without being mentally mature. One of them is forced, while the other one is your choice.

We can consider the process of healthy growth to be a never ending series of free choice situations, confronting each individual at every point throughout his life, in which he must choose between the delights of safety and growth, dependence and independence, regression and progression, immaturity and maturity.

But everything that I did starting out, every job that I had, I haven't regretted any of them. They've all been informative, interesting in one way or another. With a career, I think there's this idea that you're just trying to get somewhere. It's like, "Oh, okay, let's keep going, because if I do this, I can get this, I get this, this." It wasn't that way. I did what I wanted to do when it was in front of me, and I'm trying to continue to do that.

I think that ultimately what drives my decisions is if I think the opportunity is going to challenge me in a way that makes me better as an actor.

Sometimes I do have something in my head. But, for me, I think it usually ends up being about considering all of the elements, and trying to understand the distance from where we are to where we want to go.

I think the first thing is to recognize that there is an ebb and flow to your career. There are going to be moments that are really high, and then you're going to have moments where you step away for a little bit, and maybe that's just by choice or maybe you have a family.

The major credit I think Jim and I deserve is for selecting the right problem and sticking to it. It's true that by blundering about we stumbled on gold, but the fact remains that we were looking for gold.

I think we should stop asking people in their twenties what they 'want to do' and start asking them what they don't want to do.

We have consciousness and rational powers but unless you're willing to spend the time to gain control of yourself, gain control of your emotions, to think deeply about what you want in a year or two, or where you want your business to be, you're going to be swept away by every new event that occurs in the course of the day or the week and the small amount of time that you plan, that you address to conscious planning, is never enough to overcome the constant tide of emotions and new things happening.

I feel excited about getting older as an actress, too. I think there are some amazing opportunities around the corner and I don't need to hold on to myself or who I was when I was 25.

Success doesn't come from pie-in-the-sky thinking. It's the result of consciously doing something each day that will add to your overall excellence.