Brian Grazer

I went to USC. I wasn't a rich kid or anything like that, so I had to get a scholarship. Went to USC; my first year, I took 26 units, so I got to have a nickname. Everyone goes, 'There's 26.' So I had a nickname. Having a nickname is a good thing because then you start to get popular, and you keep that going.

Curiosity and creating ideas ironically are both democratized; they cost no money, anyone can do them, and it's up the individual and the force of their personality to give life to them.

By having a little bit of knowledge about many different things, it enables me to talk to people about a subject that they would not ordinarily think I could talk about. It's a lever for me, I suppose.

I met Edward Teller. Everything he believed in and stood for was antithetical to what I believed in and stood for. I like running into that in life. I like extreme points of view, a level of commitment - and I certainly love mastery.

Now, I'm a pretty fast and avid reader. But you can't learn the same things in a book or on the Internet that you can in a personal talk with somebody.

Almost every person that I had a preconception of, I was wrong. With Edward Teller, I was right. He was an autocrat and a technocrat, with no feeling for humanity.

I don't keep a list of people I want to talk to. It's organic. But I'd like to interview Tom Brady. Someday I'd love to meet Vladimir Putin. I'd ask him how he sees the landscape of the world, what could make it better, how that could be done.

My world was small growing up. I never really left the three-mile radius of my tiny neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley.

I think the global mass culture is either consciously or unconsciously sensitized to how vulnerable we are here on the planet.

No one in Hollywood really knows what a good idea is before a movie hits the screens. We only know if it's a good idea after it's done.

The physical effort of reading drains some of the pleasure I might take from whatever I'm reading.

You should not do everything in your power to make reviewers cranky before - right before they see your movie.

I worked for a couple of screamers in my early days in Hollywood. I don't like being screamed at, and I am not myself a screamer.

Hollywood is a land of style, a world where how you present yourself matters. Many of the people working here are so dramatically good-looking - that is their style. That's not me, and I know that.

Curiosity at work isn't a matter of style. It's much more powerful than that. If you're the boss, and you manage by asking questions, you're laying the foundation for the culture of your company or your group. You're letting people know that the boss is willing to listen.

Asking for people's help - rather than directing it - is almost always the smart way of doing things, regardless of the stakes.

Artists, whether they're Tom Cruise or John Waters or Ron Howard or Oliver Stone, you can empower them to become a better version of themselves, but you cannot change them 180 degrees to be someone they are not.

You can get good at finding access in the entertainment business. But the ideas, the narratives themselves, they are the only things that are going to be of any value.

I think that we all absolutely have curiosity. It brings about knowledge. It's energizing. It's spiritually empowering. It makes us more interesting as people.

I try to be thoughtful when I speak but not edited. I make mistakes, but people like vulnerability.