Brian J. Smith Quotes

The truth of the matter is that it's not much less work to do a short than it is to do a feature. Particularly when you're running around different countries.

When the purse strings tighten up at museums, the institutions usually cut back and cancel shows. That's exactly the wrong reaction. In fact, now is a good time for them to loosen up - a chance to breathe and experiment a little - and go for the juicy solution lurking in their own basements.

Each show comes with its own set of problems to work through.

It is characteristic of all deep human problems that they are not to be approached without some humor and some bewilderment.

When you're shooting a movie that's not necessarily a huge budget, you have to think about what you can leave out and still make it interesting.

It's very difficult to solve a lot of problems from the top down.

Solving big problems is easier than solving little problems.

We are not inferring design to account for a black box, but to account for an open box.

'Game of Thrones' couldn't be a movie. There's too much in it. You couldn't do it justice.

The ability of a television series to make adjustments is something you've got to take advantage of.

The problems of puzzles are very near the problems of life.

The more intermediaries there are, the more problems there are.

War is chaotic and when you start having a larger scale film and you have a lot of safety protocols and choreography, I would imagine it becomes more difficult.

I'm not such a big fan of having a linear answer to things.

Early on, in discussions of financial oversight, people would say, 'Well, this is a very complicated problem, therefore it requires a complicated solution.' And at that step, I would say, 'Well, wait a minute. Just because it's a complicated problem doesn't mean the best course of action immediately is one that's complicated.'

Directing is a more pragmatic experience, where you have to deal with the restrictions of time and money that force you to make certain decisions you don't have to make when you're writing.

If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.

As long as you keep your budgets small, there's a way of making films.

We cut a few corners and brought the picture in under budget by $25,000, so Paramount let us go back to Boston with a small crew to shoot some additional footage.

Science has not solved problems, only shifted the points of problems.

I have had my results for a long time: but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them.

I don't take Mars One seriously at all.

Luckily, unreasonable expectations go hand in hand with naive young scientists. The more naive the better - otherwise we would never have the audacity to try and build a 22,000-mile-high space elevator or some sprawling underwater hotel.

I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated.

With your permission, I am going to ask Carol Hartwell from the Budget Committee, who is our staff expert on this to sit with me. In the event you are overly inquisitive, I will have to ask her for answers.