Words matter. These are the best B. J. Novak Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I wanted to be a writer first, and I struck out in the world to be a writer first, and then found stand-up as a more creative outlet, as a 3D way to be creative.
I have blue eyes, and before I knew anything about fashion – I’m talking about the second grade – I learned I would get a compliment if I wore a blue shirt.
It feels as though a very disproportionate number of main characters are writers, because that’s what the writer knows. Fair enough. But nothing bothers me more in a movie than an actor playing a writer, and you just know he’s not a writer. Writers recognize other writers. Ethan Hawke is too hot to be a writer.
The most exciting thing I aspire to do is to write something new that I know is going to work, or perform something that I know is going to make people laugh.
I think a lot of writers spend years just getting up the courage to write because it seems like such a fantasy of a profession. My dad saved me all that time by making me think, ‘Oh, anyone can be a writer. It’s like being a firefighter or a lawyer.’
If a work alienates a reader, should that be counted against it? I respect people that love ‘Ulysses,’ for example, but I’m on the other side of the argument. ‘Ulysses’ would be better if it seduced me. But I probably have the minority point of view.
I’m a believer in trusting the director.
Travel is impossible, but daydreaming about travel is easy.
Good comics gravitate to each other; you know who’s your type of person by watching them onstage, hopefully.
I don’t actually feel multi-talented. I just feel that I’m in this business where we give ourselves 100 titles and gold statues. It’s like, lawyers aren’t like, ‘You’re incredible! You’re a professional arguer in front of the judge! You’re great at paperwork!’ No, you just get credit for one job.
I think I am very proud of being associated with quality things. So if I were massively famous for doing massively beloved things, yeah, that sounds great.
If I could go to dinner with one person, alive or dead, I think I would choose alive.
Different people have different styles, but there is an opportunity as a director to be a writer in every moment, with every visual cue and every piece of production design. Everything is a decision, and everything can be obsessed over.
I have one really nice watch. It’s a white-face, stainless-steel Rolex Daytona. I wear it a lot. I got that in the middle of ‘The Office.’ All the guys in the writers’ room were like, ‘Let’s all get a nice watch.’ We were too busy to upgrade our lives in a big way, but we thought this was a nice symbolic gesture.
My goal is not to make popular things. My goal is to make the things I love as popular as I can make them.
