“I think all writers should have a voyeur nature. You have to look and listen. That’s why some writers might run out of material; they’re not looking, they’re not listening.” – Buck Henry, pg. 3
“Satire is usually more political, parody is usually more cultural.” – Buck Henry, pg. 7
“I can usually tell if a joke will work, but I can’t predict if a joke or a line will become iconic.” – Buck Henry, pg. 8
“You can sometimes achieve just as much through simplicity.” – pg. 11
“A lot of films are made by filmmakers who know nothing except other films. All the great filmmakers from the past knew something about real life.” – Buck Henry, pg. 15
“You can’t write characters and not be fond of them, I think.” – Buck Henry, pg. 18
“Timing is when a movie comes out. Timing is what the country’s political disposition is when a movie is released. It’s what people are thinking about – what they want to see. You can’t really control that as a writer. […] But, for the most part, if you’re talented, I think somebody will find you.” – Buck Henry, pg. 23
“Whenever we got stuck, he always said, ‘What is the truth here? What would someone actually do?'” – Judd Apatow on Garry Shandling, pg. 24
“Merchant and Gervais didn’t want conventional funny – they wanted funny that seemed as if it were ripped from the real world.” – pg. 26
“I think that’s what the best sitcoms are about, […] they’re about creating an environment in which you want to return and poke around for another half hour.” – Stephen Merchant, pg. 31
“For me, a happy ending is never a cop-out. […] People do find love in real life. What’s wrong with that?” – Stephen Merchant, pg. 34
“But it’s really the job of the writer to pull off that sleight of hand. It’s like a magic trick. Look this way, not that way.” – Stephen Merchant, pg. 35
“I just miss the sense of the unpredictable. You can’t make up that life. You have to have lived it.” – Stephen Merchant, pg. 36
“I always try to be as open-minded as I can. It seems to me that they’re writing something from wherever they are at that point in their mindset.” – Stephen Merchant, pg. 41
“[…] This feeling of thwarted ambition and people craving some kind of escape from their world, but never really quite knowing what that escape is.” – Stephen Merchant, pg. 42
“It’s almost as if all characters now have to be black-and-white. Good and bad. And that all heroes have to be noble and honorable. But that’s not what real life is about. […] We want our shows to be aimed at a sort of reasoning, smart, intelligent audience that can steer its way through ambiguities.” – Stephen Merchant, pg. 46
“Ramis perfected a comedy genre with a deceptively simplistic formula: lovable characters, who are considered losers, rebel against the establishment and save the day with their goofball high jinks.” – pg. 54
“Comedy works two ways. Either you have a normal person in an extraordinary situation, or you have an extraordinary person in a normal situation.” – Michael Shamberg via Harold Ramis, pg. 62
“I’m always more offended by dishonesty and hypocrisy than by an honest portrayal of the real world.” – Harold Ramis, pg. 66
“There are more well-made movies than good movies. That’s sort of my new mantra. Plenty of people can shoot beautiful films. There are a lot of great editors, a lot of great designers. But where is the content? Who are the characters?” – Harold Ramis, pg. 70
“Everyone saw their own faith in Groundhog Day. And it was not really faith in a God. […] It was a faith in humanity. […] You don’t need religion to be a good person. Maybe there’s a simpler way.” – Harold Ramis, pg. 73
“There’s no one like you. No one else has had your experience. […] We’ve all lived at the same time, watched the same shows, gone to the same movies, listened to the same music. But it’s all filtered through our unique personalities.” – Harold Ramis, pg. 75
“I think the idea is to live life and take inspiration from that experience, as opposed to just getting inspiration from other artists and their work.” – Dan Mazer, pg. 84
“It’s not because they’re funnier than anybody else; it’s just that they’ve been given the belief that they’re funnier.” – Dan Mazer, pg. 87
“I think you’ll find that most comedians never forget a joke. I think that’s one thing that keeps them going.” – Dan Mazer, pg. 102
“All good comedy comes from character. In my mind, jokes are one thing, but without a convincing protagonist and somebody you care about, your comedy is on a path to nothing.” – Dan Mazer, pg. 105
“I don’t like to replicate what I’ve seen done before – I don’t like to give people what they expect.” – Merrill Markoe, pg. 112
“If we were ever experiencing success, I definitely missed it.” – Merrill Markoe, pg. 124
“I can tell in just a couple of seconds if I am going to find someone funny. […] It’s all attitude and the right kind of brain cells.” – Merrill Markoe, pg. 127
“Real human beings don’t behave in big broad strokes. They behave with tiny, exacting, site-specific details.” – Merrill Markoe, pg. 129
“The fun part, if any of it can be considered fun, is when you start to improve the piece through the editing and rewriting. That is definitely where the art is: knowing what to save, what to throw out, what to embellish.” – Merrill Markoe, pg. 130
“‘The opposite of play is not work. The opposite of play is depression.'” – Avery Trade via David Rees, pg. 134
“With comedy, you can’t be too precious, you just have to produce content, and you don’t have time to overthink it.” – David Rees, pg. 134
“The fact that your mind is being stimulated and poked and prodded, it’s going to lead to new ideas, and you’re just going to grow as a person. It sounds so simple and obvious, but for some reason I had a hard time with that concept for a while.” – David Rees, pg. 135
“How many people can say that something like that happened to them? That they and their friends have this little group in which they did this fun little thing together and then it ended up becoming internationally respected? Most people go through their entire lives without ever having anything like this happen. They get married, they have kids, they grow old, and die. And nothing like this ever happens to them. But it happened to me. That’s amazing. What are the chances it’s going to happen twice? I’m going to go out on a limb and say probably zero. But don’t get me wrong. I still complain every day.” – Todd Hanson, pg. 171
“I don’t think there is any point in making a joke that is not an honest joke. And I don’t find jokes funny if they’re not honest. Unfortunately, the truth usually hurts.” – Todd Hanson, pg. 172
“Everyone on the staff felt that it was just something to do where we would feel less like we were wasting our lives.” – Todd Hanson, pg. 174
“Start your own paper. Do your own thing. That’s what I would recommend to anybody who wants to do anything. […] Do it for free and have fun. […] If you want to do something creative, you should have a better reason for wanting to do it than to make money.” – Todd Hanson, pg. 177
“But what I understand about humor is that it’s a form of a startle reaction. It’s the processing of fear.” – Todd Hanson, pg. 187
“Look, man. I’m a college dropout. What the fuck do I know? I’m just saying you don’t have to be a genius to figure out that humor is connected to pain.” – Todd Hanson, pg. 188
“My whole life, I’ve always looked at things and thought they were more complicated than they really were.” – Paul Feig, pg. 202
“In a sense, that’s what I liked about the show ending so suddenly: loose ends are never tied up in real life.” – Paul Feig, pg. 209
“At the end of the day, none of us is that different. […] The events we experience as human beings are fairly similar. The circumstances are different, and the surroundings and the social strata are different. But, you know, insecurity is insecurity. And loneliness is loneliness. And the basic human circumstances are all the same.” – Paul Feig, pg. 212
“Creativity is our default modus operandi for dealing with existence. Everyone has this ability and uses it every day to solve the most ordinary problems. Honing it into something that can be used on a professional level is another matter.” – Bob Mankoff, pg. 259
“You had to challenge yourself and make sure the premise of a sketch wasn’t something that would be the first or most obvious thing an audience would think of.” – Robert Smigel, pg. 271
“Actors love to act in sketches about a crazy person in a normal situation, and writers love to write sketches about normal people in a crazy situation.” – Robert Smigel, pg. 271
“It’s all about what’s not being said as much as anything else.” – Robert Smigel, pg. 273
“There’s a theory that when you’re young, you define yourself by what you’re not.” – Robert Smigel, pg. 280
“If you think you have some talent, just try to find opportunities. Find like-minded people and keep writing. If you’re good, and maybe lucky, it’ll probably work out. And you won’t hate yourself for not trying.” – Robert Smigel, pg. 289
“That’s the key to life, isn’t it? Acting as if you belong where you want to end up.” – pg. 301
“Humor is a way of getting to an essential truth.” – Marshall Brickman, pg. 309
“I put in ‘call forwards,’ which were new for me. I inserted hints of events that hadn’t yet happened.” – Mitch Hurwitz, pg. 329
“I started tying things together, trying to make the story the joke – figuring out the last laugh first and then making it the answer to the first joke.” – Mitch Hurwitz, pg. 331
“Let the creative people do what they feel they have to do.” – Mitch Hurwitz, pg. 338
“To succeed you need a vision. And maybe not everyone has a vision.” – Mitch Hurwitz, pg. 339
“If the writer doesn’t like his characters, why should the viewers?” – Mitch Hurwitz, pg. 341
“You don’t need to live through an experience, necessarily, to write about it with depth and compassion.” – Mitch Hurwitz, pg. 341
“I also became a reader, […] which is so important for a writer.” – David Sedaris, pg. 348
“I don’t want to produce fake emotion; I want real emotion. Whenever it’s time to write an ending, I always think of the endings in the stories that I just love.” – David Sedaris, pg. 364
“It doesn’t occur to them that you have to choose this word over that word – and do so very carefully.” – David Sedaris, pg. 368
“You can’t teach a lot of things. […] In the real world, the most important part is sitting there and writing.” – David Sedaris, pg. 369
“Nobody’s harder on what I write than me.” – David Sedaris, pg. 370
“Sometimes understated and dry is far better than aiming to impress with literary grandstanding.” – Editors, pg. 374
“That quest for vindication is what makes Curb Your Enthusiasm so hysterical.” – George Meyer, pg. 390
“You can’t keep bitch-slapping your creativity, or it’ll run away and find a new pimp.” – George Meyer, pg. 391
“I guess I find life so disappointing that I can’t bear to be a part of the problem.” – George Meyer, pg. 395
“Experience as much as you can and absorb a lot of reality. Otherwise, your writing will have the force of a Wiffle ball.” – George Meyer, pg. 399
“But humor was an outlet for me, an escape. It was an escape from what I saw as idiotic behavior by everyone. I don’t think humor is just here to tickle people. Humor has much deeper roots than that.” – Al Jaffee, pg. 406
“Its great to be a perfectionist, but it is equally important to be a good collaborator.” – Yoni Brenner, pg. 424
“The most satisfying feeling in creative work is when you make something that you know intuitively that no one else could have done. For our purposes, this means finding an angle no one else could find, or making the joke no one else could imagine.” – Yoni Brenner, pg. 425
“I guess I felt a bit like an outsider, but I don’t think that’s too different from how most humor writers feel about their childhoods. I was an introspective person by nature.” – Allison Silverman, pg. 429
“I think it’s vital that comedy writers don’t hole themselves up and work alone. They need to meet and have a community of link-minded people.” – Allison Silverman, pg. 431
“When I took classes from Del Close, he would challenge all of us to wait – to not make the cheap, easy joke in a scene but to have faith that something funnier and more organic was on the way. It can be that way with a career too. There are a lot of times where your biggest task is just to stay calm and keep working.” – Allison Silverman, pg. 442
“The keys to a good packet are variety, concision, and resonance.” – Late Night Writers, pg. 446
“And the truth is that every real writer I know, every professional person who makes a living at writing, treats it like a job. We’re not waiting for inspiration to strike. We’re not bullshitting. We’re in the chair writing every day.” – Adam Mansbach, pg. 495
“Experience has taught me that what seems like a slam dunk rarely makes the most successful finished product.” – Larry Gelbart, pg. 513
“If practice doesn’t make perfect, then it certainly can hone your ability to do the things you want to do.” – Larry Gelbart, pg. 514
“You start out vowing that you’re not going to be cliched, and then you find out that you’ve invented a few cliches of your own.” – Larry Gelbart, pg. 528
“How funny are corporate people? Organization, which is famously known as the death of fun, is now, illogically enough, churning out sitcoms.” – Larry Gelbart, pg. 532
“I now think of writing as a privilege – as a gift that’s been given to me. Any day that I don’t get to write something – anything – is a day I have to spend being someone other than who I am.” – Larry Gelbart, pg. 533
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