James L. Brooks Quotes

Tone is everything.

Tone has the living soul.

You know, two people can say exactly the same words, saying the same story, and it would mean something entirely different.

Something's that written out is okay, but it's not always a clear indication of what a person means.

If you judge everything by how photographically real it looks, then you're missing out on a lot of what art is about and what communication is. There are ambiguities in life, and that should be reflected in art, cinema, and storytelling, I think.

Emotion' is a strange word.

Tone is very important to me.

one does not only wish to be understood when one writes; one wishes just as surely not to be understood.

Mood can be as important as sense.

it's the belief, not the words, that mean everything. it's the floating.

For me, music is all about emotion and attitude.

I cannot conceive of music that expresses absolutely nothing.

It’s not what you say; it’s what people hear.

Sometimes, when I do certain looks, I don't want the intention to be taken out of context or expressed in the wrong way.

A picture can say a thousand words but maybe not the correct ones.

Proust is interested in minutiae because life, as he sees it, is seldom ever about things but about our impression of things, not about facts but about the interpretation of facts, not about one particular feeling but about a confluence of conflicting feelings. Everything is elusive in Proust because nothing is ever certain.

It's the intent, not the word, that makes something harsh.

you can make mean anything.

For human words are like shadows, and shadows are incapable of explaining light and between shadow and light there is the opaque body from which words are born.

Yet it was very difficult to separate her interpretation, and keep it distinct from his meaning.

There were several ways of understanding her: there was what she said, and there was what she meant, and there was something between the two, that was neither.

It all depends what you mean by.

Love has various lodgings; the same word does not always signify the same thing.

The words that are coming out of my mouth and how I mean them, it's so much different.

The same words come from each mouth differently.