Ross

"What would later become vintage Ross was already in place: always coming to a meeting well prepared, which for him meant researching not only all angles of the business deal but also the personality of the principal, and trying at the outset to strike a personal chord—surprisingly personal, if possible, one that might set the other person slightly offbalance, albeit in a pleasant way. (“You’re going to see Joe Albritton? Walk in, and say, ‘How’s Cut ‘n Shoot?’ ” Ross would urge me. “That’ll really get him!"

"Before Warner, virtually everything Ross had done had been a preface; transient; utilitarian. Alliances he had formed had been little but handholds to enable him to climb higher. Now, for the first time, he had appropriated a business that he would not just as happily discard. He would continue to climb—he could not not—but he would never leave its province. He did not need to. It offered him everything he might want: seemingly infinite vistas of business possibility; astronomical compensation; entree to a glamorous, star-studded world. And it was, moreover, a business where his instincts with people—cultivating them, catering to them, winning their favor—would be extraordinarily, even uniquely, useful."

"“Most companies that are run by boards are failures,” Ashley said to Ross. “There is no evidence, furthermore, that you know how to read a script, or how a budget can be shaved, or which actor is better in what movie. Leave me entirely alone. Let me hire and fire anyone, make all the decisions about what to finance—and you’ve got a great remedy. You can always fire me.” This pact"