J. J. Abrams Quotes

I love being creative. I love acting, but I also love directing because you get to have a vision for the whole and bring that vision to fruition.

Leadership is not about a title or a designation. It's about impact, influence and inspiration. Impact involves getting results, influence is about spreading the passion you have for your work, and you have to inspire team-mates and customers.

The point of having a director is that they make the final decision; it's their point of view, they set the rhythm and they make the final decisions.

Acting, for me, is exhausting. I'm always more energized by directing. It's more intense to direct. I can pop in and express myself, then pop out again. It's a huge passion for me.

I try to direct myself the way I direct the other actors who come on my show.

As an actor, your focus is very finite. All you're worried about is your character and what you have to do, what your goals are in this scene and in this piece of material. Whereas, as the director, everything is your responsibility. I enjoy carrying the load like that and being the responsible party.

Directing feels great; I'm really happy to be doing this.

I'm a leader.

I have always loved direction.

Directing requires great discipline, that ability to be in and out at the same time. The great ones I've worked with are like generals. It's a bit like a small war on that level. The great ones have that combination of freedom and control. I'm nowhere near that. There's still so much to do as an actor. I have enough to explore with that.

Anything I do, I spend a lot of time. I do it with passion and intensity. I want to be in charge.

A good director has to be a captain - he has to work with a lot of people every day.

When you are acting, you are just one piece of the puzzle. You don't see how everything fits together. It feels like you have less authorship over the entire product. In directing, you take the entire picture into account, so you're challenged in a different way.

The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why.

Fashion is much more collaborative than one might think. You have to have an idea and vision, and you have to communicate that vision to a team of people, and you have to create an environment that allows those people to give the best that they can give.

There's no way a director can communicate with every single person on the set and yet they need to motivate and instill an ambition to want to do their best work.

Because I'm so busy and because I think of myself as a painter, I desperately guard the time that I have to paint. And sometimes I'm irresponsible to my career in order to paint. Because painting is obsessive. I forget to eat. I forget to sleep.

I direct with energy. I believe in energy. I think energy is an electric thing in actors. I try to inspire, encourage, and make choices with lots of energy. And truth. I'm big fan of truth and being funny. I like leading 50 people into battle every day.

Directing, I just feel comfortable. I know what I want. I know what I want from my crew. I lead by example. I have limitless energy as a director.

Turnaround or growth, it's getting your people focused on the goal that is still the job of leadership.

All you can really do as director is sort of set a tone.

Whatever it is that I am working on is what I become obsessed with.

When I'm making a film, I'm obsessive about what I do, and I get totally into it. That's all I'm eating, breathing, living at that moment.

I never thought being the producer was being the dictator. It means being the director and being the coach. It's a way of keeping everybody focused on the goal, and also having final say. Everybody can be in the same car, but somebody has to drive.

The time that I devote to painting is not a lot of time, but I do it 100 percent while I am working, and then there's nothing else that counts.