Top 80 J.J. Abrams Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Don’t sell your story, just tell your story.”

— J.J. Abrams

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

2. “My work isn’t any more important than anything else in the family.”

— J.J. Abrams

3. “I am lucky, I’m the first to admit that.”

— J.J. Abrams

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

4. “I think admitting youre an addict is the first step towards recovery.”

— J.J. Abrams

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

5. “On movies like Star Trek and Star Wars, you have so much that will be created or extended digitally, and it’s a slippery slope where you can get lost in a world of synthetic.”

— J.J. Abrams

6. “Robotics are beginning to cross that line from absolutely primitive motion to motion that resembles animal or human behavior.”

— J.J. Abrams

7. “I feel like in telling stories, there are the things the audience thinks are important, and then there are the things that are actually important.”

— J.J. Abrams

8. “There are always a bunch of ideas floating around and I do the best that I can to try to not do them. The ideas don’t go away and, over time, are finally like, “Okay, it’s been around so long, I have to get this thing out,” and it somehow ends up coming to some version of fruition.”

— J.J. Abrams

9. “Whenever you’re playing sports with people who are better than you are, it makes you rise to the occasion.”

— J.J. Abrams

10. “I do think there’s something about the digital age that is increasingly dehumanising us. We’re in this very weird place where we’re being pulled into experiences that aren’t really experiences at all.”

— J.J. Abrams

11. “Every hour that you spend doing something, even if you love it more than anything, you’re not with your family. Every project that you take on, that’s another choice.”

— J.J. Abrams

12. “It’s a leap of faith doing any serialised storytelling.”

— J.J. Abrams

13. “What’s a bigger mystery box than a movie theater? You go to the theater, you’re just so excited to see anything – the moment the lights go down is often the best part.”

— J.J. Abrams

14. “We’re always pitching ideas and being told “no thank you.” No offense taken, because I would so much rather be told the truth that they’re not interested and be able to find the right show for that network down the line.”

— J.J. Abrams

15. “I try to push ideas away, and the ones that will not leave me alone are the ones that ultimately end up happening.”

— J.J. Abrams

16. “Every story has at least a little truth in it. Every story comes from somewhere.”

— J.J. Abrams

17. “He walks among us, but is not with us.”

— J.J. Abrams

18. “I don’t try and write strong female characters or strong male characters, I just try and write, hopefully, strong characters and sometimes they happen to be female.”

— J.J. Abrams

Featured in: Strong Quotes

19. “It’s not a bad way to live once you let go of the idea that you deserve more.”

— J.J. Abrams

20. “I’m not trying to be coy or manipulative or Machiavellian, I want to spark people’s imaginations.”

— J.J. Abrams

21. “To me the interesting main character is never the one without flaws.”

— J.J. Abrams

22. “I was more of a Star Wars kid, actually. I always thought Star Trek was a lot of talk, and it felt a little self-important. It was hard for me to get into it.”

— J.J. Abrams

23. “It’s what happens. You love, then you lose, then you die. Even if you survive, you die.”

— J.J. Abrams

24. “It’s cool to be a nerd. There’s a general understanding that smartphones didn’t come from jocks. The digital age was foreseen by a group of short-sleeved, buttoned-down, white-shirted guys and their female equivalents designing the very stuff that’s now ubiquitous.”

— J.J. Abrams

25. “I’m an impatient guy and tend not to like to stay with one thing for a long time. I’ll never be able to write as many scripts as I did for “Felicity” or “Alias” ever again. I’m just too impatient these days. I want to get on to the next project.”

— J.J. Abrams

26. “I do feel like no matter what you’re doing, whether it’s music or writing a play or a poem or drawing a picture or painting something, that you’re speaking to what is it you want to express, what is it you want to see.”

— J.J. Abrams

27. “I have no style. There are certain people who just have a visual sense that defines their work. You could probably watch 30 seconds of anything they do and you’ll know exactly who directed it. I don’t have that skill.”

— J.J. Abrams

28. “I mean, my dad’s a television producer, and I knew I could get a job as an assistant or a reader with one of his friends, but it wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do.”

— J.J. Abrams

29. “Ratings have changed, viewer habits have changed and the options for the audience have grown enormously, but I don’t think how you tell a story is fundamentally different.”

— J.J. Abrams

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

30. “I don’t think anyone wants a movie on time that’s not worth your time.”

— J.J. Abrams

31. “When I was a kid going into the movies, you weren’t force-fed information everywhere you looked about what the movie was going to be.”

— J.J. Abrams

32. “It’s more important you learn what to make movies about than how to make movies.”

— J.J. Abrams

33. “When you work on something that combines both the spectacular and the relatable, the hyperreal and the real, it suddenly can become supernatural. The hypothetical and the theoretical can become literal.”

— J.J. Abrams

34. “I work with really hard-working people who are really good at what they do.”

— J.J. Abrams

35. “All I know is that I’ve made some big screw-ups, and I’ve done some things that have done all right. I just keep trying to learn from the mistakes I’ve made.”

— J.J. Abrams

36. “There’s nothing wrong with doing sequels, they’re just easier to sell.”

— J.J. Abrams

37. “I’ve always liked working on stories that combine people who are relatable with something insane.”

— J.J. Abrams

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

38. “I think that the success of the film is as much about it being something that families could share as anything else.”

— J.J. Abrams

39. “Withholding things in a story is no good if you aren’t building to something substantial. It becomes foreplay without the main event, and no one wants that.”

— J.J. Abrams

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

40. “Approaching any movie with a three in the title you know you are not going to get a political polemic. You are not going to get some sort of political statement or ultra-deep message.”

— J.J. Abrams

41. “I don’t want to do something that is so inside that only die-hard fans will appreciate.”

— J.J. Abrams

42. “What I’m still grappling with and learning how to do is to be looking and thinking cinematically, having come from television.”

— J.J. Abrams

43. “I’d like to use IMAX. The problem with IMAX is that it’s a very loud camera. It’s a very unreliable camera. Only so much film can be in the camera. You can’t really do intimate scenes with it.”

— J.J. Abrams

44. “We used to have more references to things that we pulled out because they almost felt like they were trying too hard to allude to something.”

— J.J. Abrams

45. “The idea to put episodes out weekly in theory makes as much sense as putting them all out at once.”

— J.J. Abrams

46. “I do think that at a certain point, the reboot sequel mode has to give way to original ideas and back to a place where, you know, films are, you know, a medium and the cinema is a place you go to see something that is, you know, wholly new.”

— J.J. Abrams

47. “I think that even if you’re wondering if two characters are ever going to kiss, drawing out the inevitability is part of the fun. Whatever the genre happens to be.”

— J.J. Abrams

Featured in: Fun Quotes

48. “I remember being taught to read at a very early age. Like creepy young. I remember being in the crib, reading. My parents were very impressed. My reading speed, comprehension and overall ability has remained at that level ever since.”

— J.J. Abrams

Featured in: Reading Quotes

49. “When you go to commercial, you want something to call the viewers back, and if you don’t have a decent act out, the audience probably won’t be there in the numbers you want when the show returns.”

— J.J. Abrams

50. “With three kids you are just trying to survive. You can’t be fastidious.”

— J.J. Abrams