Jeffrey Klarik Quotes

Those big films are scary things. There's so much money behind those things. There's that hype. You enter a machine.

Writing on assignment, with lots of money handed to you before you even began, got very scary for me. My dread of not being perfect, something I got from a childhood surrounded by powerful, successful people, began to infect everything I wrote.

Part of the magic of a startup is the fear of death. You have only so much money in the bank, and if you don't get to the right milestone before you run out, then the company goes under - it's over.

As a novelist, I'm incredibly lucky to make a living, but that doesn't mean that I don't lie awake at four o'clock in the morning, worrying.

The pressure to compete, the fear somebody else will make the splash first, creates a frenzied environment in which a blizzard of information is presented and serious questions may not be raised.

If I give five flops, I won't get a job. You have to perform at the box office when you are at the top. No one is running a charity here. People are putting huge amounts of money to make movies, and they want the films to be successful. They have invested money in you, so it is your duty to make sure the film does well.

I have always been afraid of banks.

I was probably more scared of my high school exams than I was of the Oscars. At the time you think it's everything and if you don't do well, your life's over. Opportunities are gone. So the more you do it, the less the fear is present.

My great fear has always been complete and utter failure. Hence, you see, all the dispossessed people in my fiction, and why I try to earn as much money as I can. It's a defense. I don't enjoy it or do anything with it.

I think it's one of the main negative emotional ingredients that fuels show business, because there's so much at stake and the fear of failure looms large.

Money is a strange thing. It ranks with love as our greatest source of joy, and with death as our greatest source of anxiety.

I've been in a talent show, yeah. They are terrifying. The most nerve-wracking experience of your life, I'd say.

People wonder why first-time directors can make a brilliant picture, then suck on the second one. It's because they're a little terrified the first time. So they listen to all the experts around them.

The sad truth is that excellence makes people nervous.

Show business is, essentially, a fear-based industry.

The thing I'm scared of most is not fulfilling my work. There's so much anxiety around trying to get a movie made that you don't really get to be afraid of anything else.

I've certainly auditioned for big budget studio films. I don't know if it's because there's so much money involved, but a lot of times the pressure overwhelms me and engulfs me. I end up falling apart in the audition.

If expectations are low, you can only impress people. But if expectations are there for you to be the leading guy, and you've been paid X amount of money, you're on a tightrope, and all of a sudden, you're looking down.

A lot of people in Hollywood, and everywhere pretty much, operate on fear. No one wants to get fired, so everyone's scared to take a chance. There's money involved, and there are careers and reputations on the line.

In Hollywood, if you have any success, you have this fear: What do you have to do to hang onto it?

Every time you work is a challenge. There's a constant worry about it, and it's a side of acting I don't like.

Hollywood executives believe that money is both the be-all and end-all to the moviemaking process.

There is no free lunch, so if you're playing with the big train set - on big movies - it's a lot of money they're entrusting you with, and you have to get that money back for them. I don't take that responsibility lightly.

I still have nightmares about taking tests.

You have this idea that you'd better keep working otherwise people will forget. And that was dangerous.