“Listen, if there's one sure-fire rule that I have learned in this business, it's that I don't know anything about human nature.”

“I do not want to admit to the world that I can be a bad person. It is just that I don't want anyone to have false expectations. Moviemaking is a harsh, volatile business, and unless you can be ruthless, too, there's a good chance that you are going to disappear off the scene pretty quickly.”

“A successful economic development strategy must focus on improving the skills of the area's workforce, reducing the cost of doing business and making available the resources business needs to compete and thrive in today's global economy.”

“Towns find it as hard as houses of business to rise again from ruin.”

“It's to paint directly on the canvas without any funny business, as it were, and I use almost pure turpentine to start with, adding oil as I go along until the medium becomes pure oil. I use as little oil as I can possibly help, and that's my method.”

“I love making people laugh and feel good, and that's awesome and special for me to be able to do that, but there really is nothing like kicking ass whether it's on a major scale, or whether it's in more of a dramatic fashion. Being physical and taking care of business the old-fashioned way is something that I love doing.”

“The goal seems to me at times just to be business first.”

“There are people who take rumors and embellish them in a way that can be devastating. And this pollution has to be eradicated by people in our business as best we can.”

“Emotions have no place in business, unless you do business with them.”

“Word of mouth is the best medium of all.”

“In almost every profession - whether it's law or journalism, finance or medicine or academia or running a small business - people rely on confidential communications to do their jobs. We count on the space of trust that confidentiality provides. When someone breaches that trust, we are all worse off for it.”

“Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.”

“They keep the old business. We keep the ongoing business.”

“A grocer is attracted to his business by a magnetic force as great as the repulsion which renders it odious to artists.”

“The people who are competing business-wise out there want what other successful labels and artists have. I don't want what they have I want my own path, my own sound, my own identity. Record labels care nothing about identity or artistic freedom, they want good business.”

“Except for politics, no business is scrutinized more exhaustively than journalism.”

“My fastest time in high school was a 4:29 mile. I think cross-country has something to do with my longevity in my business. When you're in an eight-mile race, you never give up.”

“Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.”

“Teenage girls these days are more and more getting lured into thinking they should dumb themselves down, and that's going to attract the wrong kind of guy, and it's serious. It's serious business.”

“I reject the cynical view that politics is a dirty business.”

“I strongly believe that missionaries make better products. They care more. For a missionary, it's not just about the business. There has to be a business, and the business has to make sense, but that's not why you do it. You do it because you have something meaningful that motivates you.”