Collaborator Quotes & Sayings

With the exceptional talent that is Guy Sigsworth as producer and collaborator, we have recorded a collection of original songs that sees me moving away from a generic line up and back into the world of a programmer. Born of reconstructed improvisation I like to think of it as Prog-Pop, but I also like to think of big dogs as small horses. So don't hang on to that thought long. Unless, of course, you think it astute of me in which case I am right — Alison Moyet

In France, this general climate of distrust toward private capitalism was deepened after 1945 by the fact that many members of the economic elite were suspected of having collaborated with the German occupiers and indecently enriched themselves during the war. It was in this highly charged post-Liberation climate that major sectors of the economy were nationalized, including in particular the banking sector, the coal mines, and the automobile industry. The Renault factories were punitively seized after their owner, Louis Renault, was arrested as a collaborator in September 1944. — Anonymous

The last collaborator is your audience ... when the audience comes in, it changes the temperature of what you've written. Things that seem to work well
work in a sense of carry the story forward and be integral to the piece
suddenly become a little less relevant or a little less functional or a little overlong or a little overweight or a little whatever. And so you start reshaping from an audience. — Stephen Sondheim

It's always different, depending on the writer and the director. A collaborator like Graham Reznick delivers a fully finished piece, perfected in every way. Other writers direct the recording session and then leave quite a bit of the work to us. — Larry Fessenden

'Collaborator' is a hostage tragicomedy, but it's also, kind of, everything I know about post-war America. Well, not everything, but it does reference a lot of the post-war period. — Martin Donovan

To make a film, the final big collaborator that you have is the composer. — Paul Thomas Anderson

Everyone who makes music is a good collaborator at their foundation because in order to make music, you have to connect to it in a way that other people can't. — Jay-Z

I'm a music storyteller and collaborator. I hear character, location, and story as music. For me a score is there to both heighten the story and to actually tell the story with the unique emotional and narrative powers of music. — David Raiklen

Not long ago, having expressed some disagreements in print with an old comrade of long standing, I was sent a response that he had published in an obscure newspaper. This riposte referred to my opinions as 'racist.' I would obviously scorn to deny such an allegation on my own behalf. I would, rather, prefer to repudiate it on behalf of my former friend. He had known me for many years and cooperated with me on numerous projects, and I am quite confident that he would never have as a collaborator anyone he suspected of racial prejudice. But it does remind me, and not for the first time, that quarrels on the left have a tendency to become miniature treason trials, replete with all kinds of denunciation. There's a general tendency - not by any means confined to radicals but in some way specially associated with them - to believe that once the lowest motive for a dissenting position has been found, it must in some way be the real one. — Christopher Hitchens

As with any actor and any collaborator, it's about forming a trusting relationship. And that's not that you have to get him to trust you so you can get him to do what you want. Especially with a little kid, it's about making them feel really safe, and getting to know and not treating them as a puppet to be moved around. — Lenny Abrahamson

With every script, I write a note to my collaborator that says: 'I write full script. But see it as a guide. You take us where we need to go any way you see fit. I tried to write something specifically for you. If you agree with my choices, fine. If not, you do what you have to do.' — Brian Michael Bendis

It was astonishing when at one point, I got the idea of how to make artifical clouds with a collaborator, we had pictures made which were theoretically completely artificial pictures based upon that one very simple idea. And this picture everybody views as being clouds. — Benoit Mandelbrot

There were people dying everywhere getting massacred in every town and village, there were people being picked up and thrown into dark jails in unknown parts, there were dungeons in the city where hundreds of young men were kept in heavy chains and from where many never emerged alive, there were thousands who had disappeared leaving behind women with photographs and perennial waiting ,there were multitudes of dead bodies on the roads, in hospital beds, in fresh martyrs' graveyards and scattered casually on the snow of mindless borders. — Mirza Waheed

Having seen Justin's work on Bleak House, I knew that he'd be incredibly well prepared and interesting stylistically for this and that was definitely the case. It's very liberating for actors - and I can only speak for myself here - but he creates a very loose environment and he's a great collaborator. — Eric Bana

If you're going to write a song, try to get together with a collaborator because it's better to write with collaborators. — Brian Wilson

I've always believed in writing without a collaborator, because where two people are writing the same book, each believes he gets all the worry and only half the royalties. — Agatha Christie

I made the transition to directing documentaries with the great help of my Co-Director on The World According to Sesame Street, Linda Hawkins Costigan. She was a gracious teacher, and a wonderful collaborator. — Linda Goldstein Knowlton

If I know something, I am not a victim. Victims don't know the meaning of their suffering. I am an enemy or a collaborator, not a victim. — Rachel Klein

I'm not a good collaborator in general. — Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

Leo Hurwicz is the father of mechanism design theory and has inspired much of my work, and Roger Myerson is an old friend and collaborator and a tremendous economist. — Eric Maskin

James DeMonaco is one of my favorite directors I've ever worked with. I think he shoots really well and all that, but the work environment he creates - he makes everyone feel respected, he makes everyone feel appreciated, and he's a true collaborator. — Zach Gilford

The creation of the island, or the impression of the island, as it changes in the mind of the character also came in to play ... there was another very important collaborator, Rob Legato, on special visual effects. And then ultimately there's Thelma Schoonmaker, who keeps me focused during the editing of the picture. — Martin Scorsese

Performers always come back from the Edinburgh festival with adventure stories. Watts told a few: meeting a young kilt maker who spent a year in a madhouse after eating too much LSD, and accompanying Seattle actor and musician Michael McQuilken (of Collaborator Productions) to the hospital after a Frisbee accident. He reached up to catch it and cut his hand on a sign, .. He had to get a few stitches, but I think he can still play. — Reggie Watts

On resigning as collaborator on the memoirs of the former Wallis Warfield Simpson, new summaries, 6 October 1955. You can't make the Duchess of Windsor into Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. — Cleveland Amory

I can't emphasize this idea enough. Getting involved with your collaborator's problems almost always distracts you from your own. That can be tempting. That can be a relief. But it usually leads to disaster. — Twyla Tharp

Oh! this opponent, this collaborator against your will, whose notion of beauty always differs from yours and whose means are often too limited for active assistance to your intentions! — Alexander Alekhine

Marc Jacobs is full of creative people and Louis Vuitton is again a name on the door, a name that has existed for many years but I'm a collaborator there and I bring in other people, other artists and I work with a great creative design team. — Marc Jacobs

Stephen Shadley is a great collaborator. Over the years I've seen him work with a wide variety of clients and stylistic approaches. He listens to people in a way that makes them feel like they're part of the process. Steve is an inspiration on all fronts, and, believe me, that's a rare quality. — Diane Keaton

The Mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and had been a collaborator and adviser of Eichmann and Himmler in the execution of this plan... He was one of Eichmann's best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures. I heard him say, accompanied by Eichmann, he had visited incognito the gas chamber of Auschwitz.7 — David Rubin

David Mamet was great to work with. He was everything that I thought he would be as a director. He's incredibly articulate, an easy collaborator. Extraordinarily knowledgeable about film and writing. — Chiwetel Ejiofor

I'm not, by nature, a collaborator. My biggest influences were people like painters and poets. These are solitary workers. — Robert Wyatt

There is no one 'best set-up', there are many - you can get to mate in endless ways. And - don't forget! - in chess, like in literature, "the other" (the reader, the adversary, the partner, etc.) has to be a collaborator, has to work with you to get to the final goal. We depend on them! But they also depend on us. — Dumitru Tepeneag

For I was, as you have already guessed, a collaborator with Destiny, not one who put a pistol to its head and demanded particular treasures. The only thing for me to do was to keep on keeping on, to have faith in my whim, and remember that for me, as for the saints, illumination when it came would probably come from some unexpected source. — Robertson Davies

I think every time you work with another collaborator, there's an adjustment process where you figure out the other person's strengths, and that has definitely happened for me. — Gene Luen Yang

I believe that inspiration will always try its best to work with you - but if you are not ready or available, it may indeed choose to leave you and to search for a different human collaborator. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Anton brings the camera. I'll bring a tuba, wear black, not shave, and take us to a burned-down Chinese restaurant. (On being photographed by his longtime photo collaborator Anton Corbijn) — Tom Waits

That was the damnedest thing about these demonic collaborator types. Even though they didn't work out and practice, they still got to run faster than we dedicated roadsters who actually sweated and strained for our ability to haul ass. Jerks. — Jim Butcher

Spouse or collaborator, it comes to the same thing. And there is work to be done. Always, always work to be done." -David Leavitt, "Partition," _The Indian Clerk_ — David Leavitt

It was difficult every ten days having a new director. I'm a real collaborator and, as an actor, I want to be directed. It's hard for me to shift gears. — Jeanne Tripplehorn

For better or worse, I've become the person the Adams Estate has entrusted to guide Dirk Gently into new mediums and to new audiences. I take that responsibility pretty seriously, which is, I'm guessing, where Ilias's comment about me being a "hands-on collaborator" (code for control freak) comment comes from. — Arvind Ethan David

I'd probably end up doing the same thing over and over. We're creatures of habit. We know what we know. With collaboration ... and I'm not just talking about music, I'm talking about in life - if you're a good listener and you have your ears open, and to be a good collaborator you have to be able to listen, you can learn something from somebody else. — Dave Koz

God is at the tip of our scalpels, our screwdrivers, our computer terminals, our dust rags, our vacuum cleaners, our pencils and pens. He is with us in our wheelchairs, or on our hospital beds, when all we can do is sit or lie flat. When we envision Him and His purpose in what we do, then we begin to grow aware of His presence in the middle of it. We are able to engage in our inward conversation with Him as we work, naturally, without strain. He becomes our partner, our collaborator. — Sue Monk Kidd

The unconscious is our best collaborator. — Mike Nichols

It is one of the few elements in the process that a director really, really can't control: an actor's performance. If you have a director that understands that, it's comforting to an actor. You're starting the relationship more as a collaborator, rather than as an employee or some kind of a soldier trying to execute something you don't organically feel. — Jason Bateman

The atmosphere in Washington was different. President Reagan remained popular, despite having committed crimes far worse than those that had brought Nixon down: financing terrorism in Nicaragua, trading weapons for hostages with Iran, and turning women and girls into mangled corpses on the streets of Beirut. Reagan's collaborator Vice President George H. W. Bush looked likely to become the next president. Somehow - and Jasper could not figure out how this trick had been worked - people who challenged the president and caught him out cheating and lying were no longer heroes, as they had been in the seventies, but instead were considered disloyal and even anti-American. — Ken Follett

I think I'm a better collaborator, in seeing the bigger picture and trying to just help that, and not be so self-centered in whatever my task is, which is being an actor. — Ray McKinnon

For me, it's not about being the best designer. I'm interested in being the best partner. The best collaborator. — Yves Behar

In the high school classroom you are a drill sergent, a rabbi, a shoulder to cry on, a disciplinarian, a singer, a low-level scholar, a clerk, a referee, a clown, a counselor, a dress-code enforcer, a conductor, an apologist, a philosopher, a collaborator, a tap dancer, a politician, a therapist, a fool, a traffic cop, a priest, a mother-father-brother-sister-uncle-aunt, a bookeeper, a critic, a psychologist, the last straw. — Frank McCourt

Though it might be invidious to mention individuals, yet I may be allowed to say how much I owe to the constant help of my wife, not quite my first, but much my most consistent collaborator, and over the longest period of years. — Robert Robinson

Treating your audience like thieves is absurd. Anyone who chooses to listen to our music becomes a collaborator. — Jeff Tweedy

We must take responsibility for educating ourselves. Being part of a 'smart mob' doesn't guarantee that you're a responsible participant or collaborator. — Howard Rheingold

ideas are alive, that ideas do seek the most available human collaborator, that ideas do have a conscious will, that ideas do move from soul to soul, that ideas will always try to seek the swiftest and most efficient conduit to the earth (just as lightning does). — Elizabeth Gilbert

You have to really work with someone who you think is going to be a collaborator, who you think understands what you want to do with this movie and how you want to do it. — John Frankenheimer

The collaborator has to be someone who understands that his role is to help you articulate what you want, but at the same time is not just going to be mechanically obeying, but adding to, supplementing, and coming up with stuff. — James Toback

The only way to conduct an effective collaboration is to debate the things upon which you disagree. If one doesn't manage to bring the other around to his point of view, then whichever collaborator feels the most passionate about the thing being debated ought to get his way. — Christopher Golden

I sent in tons of submissions and proposals, and I collected my share of form rejection letters. Eventually, I found myself working at a comic book shop, where I met my future collaborator Brian Hurtt. — Cullen Bunn

I'm a born collaborator. This is what I was born to do, really. — Daryl Hall

You've got to understand when a collaborator isn't satisfied anymore. — Martin Scorsese

You always like to be the collaborator. I don't want to take over the movie, because if I want to do that, I should really become a director because then you have the control of everything, basically. I'm very happy to just be the visual part of it, doing the visual part of the movie. — Vilmos Zsigmond

The best you can hope for is a great collaborator. — Lauren Graham

A very good editor is almost a collaborator. — Ken Follett

I am a collaborator with everyone who agrees that I need to be in control. I happily collaborate with my loyalists. — Dan Harmon

There's another option. You can consider the reader, not as a helpless victim or a passive consumer, but as an active, intelligent, worthy collaborator. A colluder, a coillusionist. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Choosing a director is like choosing a therapist - you want somebody who is going to be a step or two ahead of you, who can interpret and articulate your intentions better than you can, with the benefit of objectivity. I look for a collaborator who is going to help bring to life, on stage, in three dimensions, what is on the page. I wouldn't want a director who imposes conceits or distrusts the text or who has prejudged the characters. — Donald Margulies

The dusk here does not arrive on the shoulders of golden sunsets any more, but on the heels of long, encroaching shadows of untraceable trees in the distance, gloomy parallel patterns that cascade over the undulating landscape of unevenly dispersed corpses and other things. — Mirza Waheed

I like it when someone tells me 'I don't agree.' This is a true collaborator. When they say 'Oh, how great, how great, how great,' that's not useful. — Pope Francis

Musicals are plays, but the last collaborator is your audience, so you've got to wait 'til the last collaborator comes in before you can complete the collaboration. — Stephen Sondheim

Throughout my scientific career, my wife has been my most constant collaborator. Her experimental skill made major contributions to the work; she has eased for me beyond measure the difficulties of communication that accompany deafness; her encouragement and fortitude have been my strongest supports. — John Cornforth

Let me leave you with one very recent example of Berry at his best, drawn from an op-ed piece that he published (with his old friend and collaborator Wes Jackson) shortly after the economy crashed in the fall of 2008. For 50 or 60 years, we have let ourselves believe that as long as we have money we will have food. This is a mistake. If we continue our offenses against the land and the labor by which we are fed, the food supply will decline, and we will have a problem far more complex than the failure of our paper economy. The government will bring forth no food by providing hundreds of billions of dollars to the agribusiness corporations. I — Wendell Berry

TO
MY COLLABORATOR
who buys the ink and paper
laughs
and, in fact, does all the really difficult
part of the business
this book is gratefully dedicated
in memory of a winter's morning
in Switzerland — A.A. Milne

Our intellect is not the most subtle, the most powerful, the most appropriate, instrument for revealing the truth. It is life that, little by little, example by example, permits us to see that what is most important to our heart, or to our mind, is learned not by reasoning but through other agencies. Then it is that the intellect, observing their superiority, abdicates its control to them upon reasoned grounds and agrees to become their collaborator and lackey. — Marcel Proust