Daily Inspiration Quote by David O. Selznick

A producer admitting he’s not going to do any good work is less confession than control mechanism. Selznick, the archetype of the micromanaging Hollywood mogul, built a reputation on relentless memos, perpetual revision, and the kind of “productive” anxiety that could swallow an entire studio day. So when he says, “I don’t think I’m going to do any good work this morning,” he’s not simply forecasting a lazy stretch; he’s authorizing a pause in an ecosystem that rarely allowed one.

The phrasing matters. “I don’t think” softens the claim into something almost scientific, as if he’s running a diagnostic on his own output. “Good work” is the real tell: not work, not tasks, not meetings, but work that meets an internal standard high enough to justify the grind. It’s the language of someone whose job is taste and judgment as much as logistics, someone who knows that forcing decisions in the wrong mood can be more expensive than delay. In Selznick’s world, time was money, but bad choices were worse.

There’s also a sly self-mythologizing baked in. The line paints the speaker as a man so devoted to quality that he can’t even pretend to be effective when he isn’t. That posture flatters his own brand: the producer as tortured auteur, suffering under the weight of excellence. Coming from a figure who helped industrialize prestige, it’s an unexpectedly human sentence - and a reminder that “genius” often includes the right to stop, recalibrate, and let everyone else wait.