Top 132 Quotes & Sayings by J. J. Abrams - Page 2

I don't think I have a signature.

All I know is that I've made some big screw-ups, and I've done some things that have done all right. I just keep trying to learn from the mistakes I've made.

I think you have a passion and an obsession for something when it's not necessarily ubiquitous.

I find that it's hard to fully examine one's life and not have faith be part of the discussion.

I feel like obviously the standard for what TV looks like changes all the time.

I hate to look at the stuff I've written and consider what it means or why I do it.

As a director/writer/producer, all you ever want is to work with actors who make you look better, who make the work you do seem as good as it can be and even better than it is.

I will say that what’s been funny is, since the lightsaber’s come out, I cannot tell you how many contradictory emails I have received from people who have both defended it with unbelievably detailed graphicsI’ve gotten things that are nuts, and I’ve gotten people who’ve shown how it’ll kill you and how it doesn’t make any sense. It’s been the funniest thing to see the arguments that have developed over this thing.

I feel like I learn every day how I can be a better producer or writer or storyteller. The thing that keeps me the most balanced is just going home every day and getting my ass kicked by my kids, and having a wife who is the most wonderfully/brutally honest person I've ever met. I think that that is always the first lens through which I see the world. For everything else, I'm just grateful for the people I work with.

Maybe there are times when mystery is more important than knowledge. I realized that the white page is a magic box. Ultimately, the mistery box is all of us. Ubiquitous technologies. What comes next ? Mystery as catalyst for imagination.

I love stories where the impossible appears believable, plausible and real. Maybe it's silly, but it's one of the reasons Michael Crichton's writing always appealed to me: he took outlandish ideas and made them seem completely within the realm of possibility. I remember reading "Jurassic Park" and feeling like: "Oh, yeah - no, that's totally happening right now. They're bringing back dinosaurs!"

Directing's the best part. Whenever I've directed something, there's this feeling of demand and focus that I like. And secondly, it means that you've gotten through all the writing stuff, and the producing stuff, and casting, and prep, and all those stages that are seemingly endless. So directing is sort of the reward for all the work you put in before. And then there's the editing, which is another amazing stage of the process. It's incredible the moments you can create.

It's more important you learn what to make movies about than how to make movies

I'm actually a huge fan of digital as well. I appreciate how that technology opens the doors for filmmakers who never had access to that level of quality before. However, I do think film itself sets the standard for quality. You can talk about range, light, sensitive, resolution -- there's something about film that is undeniably beautiful, undeniably organic and natural and real.

Honestly I'm excited about the possibilities of what comes next, and the funny thing is, that is sort of what "Star Wars" is kind of about. I mean, I remember being 10 years old and seeing that movie and leaving the theater and feeling like, oh, my God, anything is possible. And I feel like anything is possible right now. I don't know what's next, but I look forward to it.

Cameron Crowe is someone who I've admired for so long, and I've been friends with him for many years, and I've wanted to work with him so badly that I just never stopped bothering him about writing a script that would be for a pilot.

And the parents who knew "Star Wars" could take kids and feel like they've gone back to a place that is familiar and yet found brand-new characters that took them somewhere they'd never been. And it was important me that we embrace that feeling, and you can call it retro, but I think it's what "Star Wars" is.

My work isn't any more important than anything else in the family

I may be even more grateful to George Lucas now than I was as a kid.

I've just been lucky to work on things that I felt would be cool to see. It's not that I had a strategy or anything.

I'd like to use IMAX. The problem with IMAX is that it's a very loud camera. It's a very unreliable camera. Only so much film can be in the camera. You can't really do intimate scenes with it.

Well, you know, going into any project, especially with a fan base as vocal and passionate as something as "Star Wars," you will have groups of people who will find issues with whatever it is you're doing. But our job was to tell the best story we could about characters that we loved, and we knew that we needed to go backwards to go forwards, and we needed to go back to a feeling and a place and a time.

There's something about looking at Super 8 films that is so evocative. You could argue it's the resolution of the film somehow because they aren't crystal clear and perfect,so there is a kind of gauzy layer between you and what you see. You could argue it's the silence of them. You could say it's the sound of the projector that creates a moodiness. But there's something about looking at analog movies that's infinitely more powerful than digital.

The magic that works, to me, is the magic that feels completely grounded and real and tangible.

I'm an impatient guy and tend not to like to stay with one thing for a long time. I'll never be able to write as many scripts as I did for "Felicity" or "Alias" ever again. I'm just too impatient these days. I want to get on to the next project.

I think that the success of the film is as much about it being something that families could share as anything else.

I think admitting youre an addict is the first step towards recovery.

I've always liked working on stories that combine people who are relatable with something insane.

Don't sell your story, just tell your story.

It's cool to be a nerd. There's a general understanding that smartphones didn't come from jocks. The digital age was foreseen by a group of short-sleeved, buttoned-down, white-shirted guys and their female equivalents designing the very stuff that's now ubiquitous.

Mystery is more important than knowledge.

On movies like Star Trek and Star Wars, you have so much that will be created or extended digitally, and it's a slippery slope where you can get lost in a world of synthetic.

'Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope' (1977) is probably the most influential film of my generation. That work was the personification of good and evil and the way it opened up the world to space adventure, the way westerns had to our parents' generations, it left an indelible imprint. So, in a way, everything that any of us does is somehow directly or indirectly affected by the experience of seeing those first three films.

I remember being taught to read at a very early age. Like creepy young. I remember being in the crib, reading. My parents were very impressed. My reading speed, comprehension and overall ability has remained at that level ever since.

There are always a bunch of ideas floating around and I do the best that I can to try to not do them. The ideas don't go away and, over time, are finally like, "Okay, it's been around so long, I have to get this thing out," and it somehow ends up coming to some version of fruition.

Whatever is being investigated, created or produced now, in movies or TV, needs to consider the context in which it is being distributed. It's not a vacuum. There are certain universal themes of love, conflict, loyalty or family that are everlasting and that need to be presented in a way that makes it feel relevant, even if it's a period piece. You need to consider what context that film, that story and those characters are being seen in.

I'm not as optimistic as Gene Roddenberry was. I fall somewhere in the middle. But as a romantic, I like to think things are going to get bigger rather than worse.

It's what happens. You love, then you lose, then you die. Even if you survive, you die.

Directing a movie precludes me from being involved in any greater way. But, the job was never to do more, it was always to enable. Sometimes as a producer, you're creating and writing it, or sometimes you're writing and directing it, or other times you're there from the very beginning.

Withholding things in a story is no good if you aren't building to something substantial. It becomes foreplay without the main event, and no one wants that.

The noise you hear after people see something you do - whether it's a TV show or a movie - that always makes you see that thing slightly differently. Without question. The ability of a television series to make adjustments is something you've got to take advantage of. And test-screening a movie can be helpful too. But the part that can be dangerous is when you take those notes as gospel, instead of taking them with a grain of salt. The key is to use the response as one of the tools in your box, as opposed to using it to determine what you do.

I don't think anyone wants a movie on time that's not worth your time.

Approaching any movie with a three in the title you know you are not going to get a political polemic. You are not going to get some sort of political statement or ultra-deep message.

I feel like the beauty of this age of filmmaking is that there are more tools at your disposal, but it doesn’t mean that any of these new tools are automatically the right tools. And there are a lot of situations where we went very much old school and in fact used CG more to remove things than to add things.

It's not a bad way to live once you let go of the idea that you deserve more.

I feel like in telling stories, there are the things the audience thinks are important, and then there are the things that are actually important.

But I'm grateful for everyone who would want to read a spoiler because it means that they care and want to see the movie. I know what it feels like, as an enormous Star Wars fan myself.

We're always pitching ideas and being told "no thank you." No offense taken, because I would so much rather be told the truth that they're not interested and be able to find the right show for that network down the line.

I do feel like no matter what you're doing, whether it's music or writing a play or a poem or drawing a picture or painting something, that you're speaking to what is it you want to express, what is it you want to see.

I was more of a Star Wars kid, actually. I always thought Star Trek was a lot of talk, and it felt a little self-important. It was hard for me to get into it.

Every hour that you spend doing something, even if you love it more than anything, you're not with your family. Every project that you take on, that's another choice.

I do think there's something about the digital age that is increasingly dehumanising us. We're in this very weird place where we're being pulled into experiences that aren't really experiences at all.

I quickly said that, because of my loyalty to 'Star Trek' and also just being a fan, I wouldn’t even want to be involved in the next version of those things. I declined any involvement very early on. I’d rather be in the audience not knowing what was coming, rather than being involved in the minutiae of making them.

I'm working on the Star Wars script today and the people in my office have covered up all my windows with black paper. I guess they wanted to make sure no one could see what I was doing. It seems rather extreme.

It is an incredible thing to see how many crazy things get thrown out that people then often write commentaries about how happy they are or how disappointed they are about something that's completely false. But, it's a lot of noise, frankly.

We used to have more references to things that we pulled out because they almost felt like they were trying too hard to allude to something.

If you watch the first [Star Wars] movie, you don't actually know exactly what the Empire is trying to do. They're going to rule by fear -- but you don't know what their endgame is. You don't know what Leia is princess of. You don't yet understand who Jabba the Hutt is, even though there is a reference to him. You don't know that Vader is Luke's father, Leia is his sister -- but the possibility is all there. The beauty of that movie was that it was an unfamiliar world, and yet you wanted to see it expand and to see where it went.

It's not often that I read about actors that I'm going to be meeting. I get to read articles about actors who were going to come in, so I get to see someone and say, "Oh, I read that I was going to see you. It's very nice to see you."

I was just like, "I want to make a decent 2-D movie." I was so worried that, instead of being a decent 2-D movie, it would have been a bad 3-D one.

I guess the idea of not wanting to choose to direct a film, for which I've not read a script. It's a tough decision to make without seeing any pages. That's not to say that I don't have all the faith in the world in the spectacular writers.