James Lapine

“I'm a very laid-back person.”

“That's the thing about dreams - they're ineffable. If you can get to the bottom of it, it's not a dream.”

“Most musicals are real crowd pleasers.”

“I did 'Impromptu,' which was a thrill and a horror all at once - my first movie and having to do it in Paris, and my wife wrote it, and I had some difficulties on the set, blah, blah, blah.”

“I love the visual aspect of the theater. But I like what people have to say, too.”

“As you get older, you realize happiness involves a lot of problems.”

“I need an audience to look at what I've done so I can understand it, so I can step back and watch them respond and figure out what they're understanding about what I'm trying to do and what they're confused about.”

“I'm a hippie child of the '60s. What drives me crazy about mass media entertainment is that it's so often devoid of any ideas.”

“When you grow up, you don't realize that your parents are any different than anybody else's. And their behavior - you have nothing to compare it to. So that is what normal is, even if it's abnormal.”

“When you're trying out on Broadway, it's very hectic, and you're making changes night after night. There's a lot of pressures from producers to make some changes, and you're writing for actors who are in it - and sometimes the limitations of actors who are in it.”

“Sometimes good news is hard to absorb.”

“Meryl Streep's really smart, and she's a film animal, and she knows that.”

“We live in an era of reinvention: Madonna and everybody desperately trying to change their persona.”

“I love photography... I'd like to write a show about photography.”

“Some of the things I've done in my life, I've done to make money because I had to make money... and some things I did just because they were on my mind and they were of interest to me... some of the little plays I wrote.”

“Fairy tales cross generational lines, and how you respond to them depends on when in your life you're seeing them.”

“I've grown more and more appreciative of good writing, and I now really hope I can become a better and better writer.”

“The one thing you don't want to do is go off and keep rewriting. If something's not quite right, it's often about modulating what's already there.”

“I'd like to just say that there's nothing darker than 'Old Yeller' and 'Bambi' and some of the early Disney stuff.”

“I don't do movie junket-y things, because I don't really do movies that much.”