The Hollywood thing is - like, it feels like the biggest thing in the world, and yet it's the smallest town.
Ryan Murphy
I'm very black and white about what I like or don't like, and I've always been that way.
I came of age during AIDS and the terror of that and the sadness and the death and the overwhelming despair.
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.
Tone is everything in TV.
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.
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'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'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.
Joan Crawford and Bette Davis are larger than life. They just are. They sucked all the oxygen out of a room: they're icons; they loom large in our imaginations. But the truth of the matter is both women were diminutive.
I'll ask the writers' room who they voted for Emmy awards, but I'll never ask who they voted for president.
Even though 'Glee' is sometimes a hard road, I am very excited about writing a multi-year arc.
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 a very rocky, difficult, emotional childhood with my parents.
Here's the thing: When you tell somebody, 'I love you. I have always loved your work, and I want to show people a different side of you,' it's sort of an interesting thing that in my case, I've been very lucky, where they're like, 'OK.'
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.
Originally, 'Popular' was going to be a movie.
I'm fascinated by the whole clown phobia thing because I personally don't have it.
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.
When I started, you couldn't do anything. A gay person trying to write a gay character in 1998 - it was so difficult.
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.
One thing I always do is just tell actors that I'm as afraid as they are, because I can sense that, and I feel it, too.
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.
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 only wrote two fan letters in my life. One was to Bette Davis. And one was to Ron Palillo, who played Horshack on 'Welcome Back, Kotter.' And Ron did not write me back, but Bette Davis did.
What I'm interested in doing now is to go and give voices that are not being heard a platform and to sort of bring people into people's homes that you think you may hate or despise.
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.
One of the unique things about 'American Horror Story' is, it's very respectful to actors. Actors in many cases don't want to be tied down to a seven-year contract. So my deal with the cast is: you're free after every year: you can come back, or you cannot come back.
I love Sarah Jessica Parker; I've worked with her. I think she's amazing... She's a great producer and has a great business acumen.
I wanted to create a culture that allowed my children to see the world differently, if only from a strictly visual perspective: to have a child see a room where half of the people are women and minorities is so powerful. I think everyone wants for their children a world that's better than the one they came up in.
When I was starting out in Hollywood, everything was such a battle.
The only way to get through the life I had was just to have a big head of steam and determination.
I think John Landgraf sees things in the same way I do. We see eye to eye on a lot.
I was an altar boy, with a very strict father. And movies were always my escape.
I'm passionate about actors, and I'm passionate about showing actors in different lights.
I think that the work that Bette Davis and Joan Crawford did was truly extraordinary, and that's their legacy. Not the other petty stuff.
I think everyone wants for their children a world that's better than the one they came up in.
All the big successes of my career have been ideas that, on paper, you think, 'Well nobody's going to go for this because that genre is so dead.'
I love crispy, cool sheets.
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.
It's interesting when women direct. The work is better. They ask more people to participate.
Sometimes in entertainment, when people have done the Academy Awards - like, for example, in 'The Bodyguard' - I just didn't believe it; it didn't feel authentic.
You can't be the enfant terrible when you have the enfant at home.
I'm not interested in anything but emotionally driven stories; that's why almost all of my work is exclusively anchored by women.
I do work with a lot of women in my company, and I write a lot of roles for women over 40. I think, in 'Feud' alone, we have 15 roles for women over 40, which I'm very proud about.
Larry Kramer wisely realized so early on that to change the world, people have to know you. If they know you and see that we are all the same - that we all have normal hearts - that's the first step. I'm both amazed at the progress and amazed at how far we have to go.
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.
I love Larry Kramer's advocacy, and I love him as a person, and I think young people need to see that story.
You've not felt the pain of rejection until a television show based on your own life is canceled.
