Top 50 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Television Directors

If you want a lot of visual humor, the way to do it is have visual people do it.

Unlike a lot of British directors, I hadn't done any theater. But, I had a great mentor who said, "What you're looking for is exactly the same thing you've done in your documentaries, which is moments of emotional truth.

There's always been an ongoing struggle between commerce and art.

The ceiling was curved, giving the space a cave-like feel, and it was either very large, very small, or sort of normal-sized.

Being hungry and staying hungry is something that I really try to take pride in. No matter what level of success I've achieved, I always love being able to talk about the craft and continue to talk about my art.

As a director, you always want things to look good. You're always trying to make things look tidy. That's what we're all trained to do.

You're not limited by your circumstances only by your imagination.

Discover your strengths and then hone them and be who you are meant to be.

A good film to me is like lightning in a bottle. I used to think that meant hit and run. But then I've changed my definition about what lightning in a bottle means. I think it means that you wait for that surprising moment that you really didn't expect would happen, as good as it may have gone in rehearsal.

None of the male characters are as powerful or as interesting as the four central female characters. The men work best as representations of the current stage of a particular female’s psyche. The men function as catalysts, and are certainly important to the development of the story, but the relationships are not the goal. I do not see romance as being what’s central to the success of PRETTY LITTLE LIARS.

They wouldn't call it falling in love if you didn't get hurt sometimes, but you just pick yourself up and move on.

To me, style is all about expressing your individuality freely and courageously.

My wife assures me she didn't sleep with Tiger Woods, but how can I believe her?

Artists lead unglamorous daily lives of discipline and routine, but their work is full of passion. Each has a vision and feels responsibility to that vision.

I think the biggest thing is just making sure that you do the work that you connect with, personally, and that you do work where you can really bring something to the table. It's just about being truthful to yourself.

Any job ends up with stress, and certainly there's always a deadline looming when you work in TV. It's sort of constant.

The issue of animal use and abuse can seem insurmountable, it is tragic and it is complex. We love our companion animals and we value wildlife but we are generally blind to the realities of what goes into the food we eat.

Time, Kate was learning, was like a river. You might put up obstacles, even divert it briefly, but the river had a will of it's own. It wanted to flow a certain way. You had to force it to change. You had to be willing to sacrifice.

So I just always drew. But never took that as a career path. I ended up in the computer business, and found myself as the vice president of sales and marketing for a computer accessories company.

I don't come from a flashy film background. TV's been a great home for me, and being able to do that work kind of unnoticed, and not putting that out in the foreground was perfectly fine for me. I just continue to want to make sure that that's what it's about. I think when you start spinning out on what other people are doing and trying to chase something, you're really on a one-way ticket to things not working out the way you want them to.

That's the funny thing about havin' a kid. They come with their own set of problems; make everything else you were worried about seem kinda silly.

Just besides how smart Aaron Sorkin stuff is, really, is how visceral it is, how sensual it is. Not sexual, sensual. Always tactile. When you read his scripts, the scripts read fast and the words almost jump off the page.

The actor's relationship to the crew is really a big dynamic that influences everything. When actors are assholes, it becomes problematic. When actors are great and sensitive and prepared, it makes a huge difference.

Just like every kid who comes into show business on some level, I used to put shows on in my basement. I even started with doing tricks and having a ventriloquist dummy.

I don't feel competitive with other filmmakers. I think we're all working to the same goal. When I see great craft, I don't care who's doing it, what network it's on, where they came from. I just love it and celebrate it, and I just worry about the work I'm doing and what's right for the projects I'm doing.

I love comedy. It's where my heart is.

I'll never forget the moment when I saw a red light go on, on the camera, and that image translated to the monitor, and then a different light went on and the shot changed, and I went, "Wow, that's how it's done! That's how that gets to my TV! This is what I want to do with my life!" I literally had that moment of epiphany, at eight years old.

When I was eight years old, I knew I wanted to make films.

I do not know what happened with your parents or why they did what they did. But in all the world, I could have wished for no daughter but you.

PRETTY LITTLE LIARS works as a metaphor for our central human experience: we have no way to objectively know about anything, no way to move forward with certainty, and yet move forward we must. We stumble through life, trying to find our own way, not knowing whom to listen to, whom to trust, whom to suspect, what to believe. But in that process we discover our most authentic selves.

I had horrible moment at the end of a very successful day, where I realized I just felt nothing about it and I didn't care. And I had that fear that I would, because I was successful at it, that I would be there 20, 30 years down the road, doing this job and just not caring about what I did.

Swampy [ Marsh] and I live as far away from each other as we possibly can and still work together. But we just always felt like we were funnier when we were in the room together than we are when we're separate.

Good acting should be invisible. You shouldn't be aware of the acting. It should feel real.

I was drawing professionally by the time I was 12. I used to do very detailed sort of photorealistic pen-and-ink work, and I burned out on it around, like, high school. And cartooning really got me back into drawing.

Darren Criss in particular enjoys his spanking. In case you were curious.

The more times people laugh, the better the film is.

I drew when I was very, very young. My mom kept stuff I drew when I was 2 and a half years old, because it looked like, you know, like a jaguar as opposed to a cheetah.

You couldn't hope to make a drama and have people rewriting on the day and having the actors making suggestions, "Wouldn't it be funny if my character did this?" "No. You're the actor. I'll tell you what to do."

I've always had a preference for digital, all the way. I grew up through video and camcorders, and I was part of the VHS generation. I made all my stuff in high school on video, and worked for public access. Staying in digital is a very familiar, very natural progression of the things that I've worked in before, and I always try to break as much new ground as I can.

Studios are so used to digital now and there is a mythology that it's cheaper. But it's really not cheaper. For instance, digital is great for night exteriors, everybody knows it's a video tap, so it's very responsive to light. So you can go out at night, shoot with digital and it's gorgeous, beautiful to look at . Conversely, you go out and shoot day exterior, and it slams you, just like you know from your own video recording.

Authenticity is what I've always gone after in my work, and I understand what feels emotionally right, instinctively. Working with actors has just come with experience.

I answered an ad, for a campus cartoonist at the university I was in, my freshman year. I was like, Oh, I can draw, and I'm sort of a funny guy. I should try this. Then they paid me to do a comic strip for the paper.

But I guess everything in life is a bit disappointing, isn't it?

We just keep trying to beat every show with the funny stick until it's funny

I think you have to be scared every morning that you go out to shoot, or you lose your edge. With actors, there has to be that adrenaline and you have to keep challenging yourself, and I certainly challenge myself, as a director.

Aaron Sorkin whole thing was that he didn't want the pomposity of the presidency in the West Wing. But once we cast Martin Sheen and we realised Martin's incredible accessibility, nothing felt pompous or aloof. If the show is about all the planets, let's end it with the sun.

Animals have been reduced to objects for production, and their lives are designed around our needs and desires.

Our rule is: If it makes the parent laugh, and the kid asks why, that can't be an uncomfortable conversation.

I remember running into Aaron's Sorkin office and going "The show's West Wing going to work! I know it's going to work!" And it was literally that moment: the energy, the place, the feel. I didn't know the show would be successful but I thought it was going to be good and I don't have that feeling very often. And we were rehearsing all of that not knowing who the President of the United States was!

I started drawing in first grade. Because the kid next to me was drawing, and I remember thinking: I want to be able to do that!