Ryan Murphy
As a showrunner, you can never be a 'maybe.' When I do movies, there is a lot of, 'Maybe' and, 'Let's investigate that.' But for TV, it has to be yes or no.Collection: Movies
I don't think there's ever a winner in a feud. It's about emotional pain and an inability to conquer the pain.
I think I have a pattern of nice and lovely and then dark and twisted.
I'm very black and white about what I like or don't like, and I've always been that way.
You can't be the enfant terrible when you have the enfant at home.
I remember I always felt much more safe standing up on a chair and singing in front of my mother than I was in front of my father!
For me, the saddest thing in the world is always lost potential. That is always the most heartbreaking thing, when there's something left to be mined from a situation or a person that goes unexplored; that's a tragedy to me.
I believe most people don't go into show business unless they've been majorly unloved as a child.
Well, I'm from Indiana. So to me when I was a little kid growing up, Cincinnati was the glamorous New York of it all.
I started off in this business in 1998, and I didn't fit in. There was no place for me, and I always felt like an oddball. Nobody really understood my work or what I wanted to do in my references.
Tone is everything in TV.
I was very much raised by my grandmother, who actually was Bette Davis - looked like her, acted like her, talked like her. Probably, it was just out of my love and affection for my grandmother that I was interested in Bette.
I started off as a journalist when I was young and I did not get paid unless I wrote three stories a day.
Even though 'Glee' is sometimes a hard road, I am very excited about writing a multi-year arc.
When I was growing up my favorite show was 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show', and I loved all the stuff that Norman Lear did.
Yeah, at home it's all moonbeams and puppy-dog tails, so I guess I do have a darker side - and I like writing about it.
I had been accepted to film school, but my parents couldn't afford it, and yet they made too much money for me to get a scholarship.
Originally, 'Popular' was going to be a movie.
I love crispy, cool sheets.
You know, I'm very particular about my sheets. They have to be one hundred percent cotton, with a high thread count. Only cotton. No flannel.
I've gotten death threats, yes. I have. I think anytime you shine a spotlight on homosexuality or minorities and you try and say they are as normal or as worthy as acceptance as others, the people who are on the fringe don't like that and they will come after you. And they have come after me.
I've always been sort of, 'I love it,' or, 'I hate it,' and I think, as a result, I've always been a polarizing person. You either love me or you hate me. There's not a lot of 'Hmmm.'
I had a very rocky, difficult, emotional childhood with my parents.
I'd never had a mentor in Hollywood. Men have always been in control of the business, and they usually mentor people who are like them - but two inches shorter.
Just because you have a baby on your hip - or one on the way or two at home - doesn't mean you can't go after your dreams.
I think everyone wants for their children a world that's better than the one they came up in.
When I got my overall deal at Fox, I got amazing bosses in John Landgraf and Dana Walden and Peter Rice. For the first time ever, they said, 'Don't change who you are; be who you are. And write something you want to watch.' That thing was 'Glee,' and it took off from there.
I feel every day that everything I create - everything I do - I want it to be a risk.
I think when you take the big swings - and I've done plenty of big swings that I was told were never going to work - those are always the things that break through.
It's interesting when women direct. The work is better. They ask more people to participate.
I'll ask the writers' room who they voted for Emmy awards, but I'll never ask who they voted for president.
Part of being an artist is being able to write about the world you live in and the times that you've been a part of.
People think I'm just sort of this P. T. Barnum, razzle-dazzle guy. They think I go out of my way to be outlandish and theatrical at the expense of having emotions. They don't get that there's another side to me, and I keep trying to show that other side.
When I was starting out in Hollywood, everything was such a battle.
With all of my work, it always takes a while for people to get it.
I think John Landgraf sees things in the same way I do. We see eye to eye on a lot.
I'm passionate about actors, and I'm passionate about showing actors in different lights.
I love 'Girls' on HBO because it's brave and cool.
I came of age during AIDS and the terror of that and the sadness and the death and the overwhelming despair.
I love Larry Kramer's advocacy, and I love him as a person, and I think young people need to see that story.
I feel every day that everything I create - everything I do - I want it to be a risk. I think when you take the big swings - and I've done plenty of big swings that I was told were never going to work - those are always the things that break through.
When I talk to young people, I always tell them the biggest lesson I learned was that you shouldn't care about the outcome. If it fails, it fails. Every failure will groom you for your next big reward.
I lean into fear because I feel like that excites me as an artist.
I actually think actors both are drawn to playing real-life historical people and are terrified.
I am not going to do anything unless I am afraid of it.
I loved musicals, and I loved Barbra Streisand, and I loved Louis Malle. My tastes were very bizarre, but the thing they all had in common is that they took me out of my life and made me feel something.
I would much rather have watched Jill Clayburgh in 'An Unmarried Woman' than 'Star Wars.' Even though I saw that movie when I was 11, I related emotionally to being left and thrown in a trash can on the side of the road. Her damage - I got it. I didn't understand Han Solo at all.
I've always felt I've related to women deeply because of being gay and feeling like there was always somebody trying to oppress me, to keep me down, to put me in my place.
I feel like I grew up in such a big way in the past couple of years, in a way that I never thought I would. You can't be the enfant terrible when you have the enfant at home.
The only way to get through the life I had was just to have a big head of steam and determination.