Quotes

If you've ever had a coworker actively interfere with your productivity, try to make you look bad, steal your ideas, or give you false information, you've been the victim of undermining.

When writing 'Give and Take' and 'Originals,' the predominant emotion for me was curiosity.

I try to get as close as I can to cleaning out my inbox every night.

For years, I believed that anything worth doing was worth doing early. In graduate school, I submitted my dissertation two years in advance. In college, I wrote my papers weeks early and finished my thesis four months before the due date. My roommates joked that I had a productive form of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

If you don't hire originals, you run the risk of people disagreeing but not voicing their dissent.

We have many identities, and we can't be authentic to them all. The best we can do is be sincere in our efforts to earn the values we claim.

People often believe that character causes action, but when it comes to producing moral children, we need to remember that action also shapes character.

When people are depending on us, we end up finding strength we didn't know we had.

When trying to innovate, most people stop after 10-15 possibilities, failing to recognize that their first ideas are usually the most obvious ones.

Recognize that dissenting opinions are useful even when they're wrong, and go out of your way to reward them.

When medical students focus on helping others, they're able to weather the slings and arrows of long hours and devastating health outcomes: they know their colleagues and patients are depending on them.

A resilient culture has a certain amount of resistance embedded in it. Not so much to capsize it, but enough so that it doesn't atrophy.

In college, my idea of a productive day was to start writing at 7 A.M. and not leave my chair until dinnertime.

To all the other dreamers out there, don't ever stop or let the world's negativity disenchant you or your spirit. If you surround yourself with love and the right people, anything is possible.

With the first 'Hatchet,' I had an epic battle with the ratings board. They kept giving the movie an NC-17. There is absolutely no way that movie should have gotten an NC-17. All the gore in it is so ridiculous and over-the-top that you can't take it seriously.

Hollywood is a roulette wheel. Each project dictates what's going to happen for you next, and it doesn't really matter that your project is critically acclaimed or won awards or has fans worldwide. It's a matter of how many movie tickets and DVDs and on-demand movies that you sell.

'E.T.' was the movie that made me want to make movies in the first place, and it was the first movie that made me focus on writing instead of what happens in the movie.

If there is one constant to my life, it is that you cannot tell me 'no.'

As a writer, Chris Columbus was a big influence. 'The Goonies' was the first movie I ever saw that kids speak normally and not imagined how kids would talk. Always a big fan of Chris Columbus' dialogue and storytelling.

Hollywood would make a holocaust an animated comedy if people would pay to see it; they don't care... they just want your money.

I think metal and horror definitely go hand in hand. Even when you go to a horror convention and meet the fans, nine out of 10 times if they're not wearing some sort of horror shirt, they're wearing a shirt with a metal band on it.

'Jaws' was the ultimate man vs. nature movie, and it was a movie that was basically three people against the elements, so that was the biggest influence on 'Frozen.'

I like that conventions want me to appear and festivals want me to come speak because they like the climate I attract. It's a good feeling.

I once pitched this show that was just like 'Quantum Leap,' in terms of the set-up, and I got a pass because they said 'Quantum Leap' didn't work, even though it was on for six or seven seasons. You can't say 'Quantum Leap' didn't work!

You may love football, but that doesn't mean you have any business trying to play the sport. It's the same thing with filmmaking... everybody has a great idea for a movie, but do you have the stamina to get good at your craft and deal with how heartbreaking it is?