Author: Kelsey Mihachik

“There are an unfathomable number of ways to win in a chess game. But there are only two possible results. You win or you lose. Chess is like consciousness. It’s finite yet infinite. It’s logical yet illogical. It’s knowable yet unknowable.” – pg. 188

“The greatest thing I’m excited for is, after a life of hardship, struggle, pain, and suffering, is to now, as I finally venture into my thirties, enjoy the fruits of my labor. There will be ups and downs, happy times and hard. But […] this is me at my happiest, and I plan to continue to create from the purest part of my heart.” – pg. 275

“I have used words and creative freedom to better myself. Whoever may be reading these words, I hope you have the courage to do the same through any form of creative expression. It has been a long road, but I too, finally… have escaped the supermarket.” – pg. 275

“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

“You, and only you, are ultimately responsible for who you become and how happy you are.” – pg. xi

“If you’re unhappy, that’s on you.” – pg. 5

“Moving doesn’t change who you are. It only changes the view outside your window.” – pg. 7

“When you really want something, you will find a way. When you don’t really want something, you’ll find an excuse.” – pg. 14

“In fact, the stones we most often try and fling at others are the ones that have been thrown at us.” – pg. 35

“The issue wasn’t that I didn’t know who I was; the problem was that I didn’t know who I had allowed myself to become.” – pg. 51

“Very few roads to love are easy to navigate.” – pg. 52

“Sometimes choosing to walk away, even if it means breaking your own heart, can be the greatest act of self-love you have access to.” – pg. 53

“That’s the incredible part about your dreams: nobody gets to tell you how big they can be.” – pg. 58

“That is what it boils down to: faith. The belief that your life will unfold as it was meant to, even when it unfolds into something painful and difficult to navigate.” – pg. 108

“You’ve already done little things and big things… Goals you accomplished years ago that are on someone else’s bucket list. Focus on what you have done. […] When you force yourself to admit all the things you have accomplished, you’ll realize that it’s wrong to be so hard on yourself for all the things you haven’t.” – pg. 110

“If we choose to stay underwater without kicking our way to the surface, we eventually forget how to swim.” – pg. 117

“There are hundreds of ways to lose yourself, but the easiest of them is refusing to acknowledge who you truly are in the first place. You – the real you – is not an accident.” – pg. 132

“Calling your shot is powerful when you’re chasing down a dream, but it’s also not enough. You have to spend real time focusing on everything you can about that dream. What does it look like? What does it feel like? How much detail can you imagine? How real can you make it in your own mind?” – pg. 139

“When you’re creating something from your heart, you do it because you can’t not do it.” – pg. 147

“I will not let a nightmare have more power than my dreams.” – pg. 155

“Someday I’ll hold my daughter in my arms and I’ll understand why I waited for her.” – pg. 172

“You’ve got a lifetime of negative talk in your head playing on repeat. You need to replace that voice with something positive. […] So come up with a mantra and say it to yourself a thousand times a day until it becomes real.” – pg. 185

“I heard once that every author has a theme.” – pg. 211

“When we watch, when we listen, we’re not getting away from the world. We’re actually digging in.” – pg. 15

“Making someone laugh is a kind of connection. So is laughing together with other people. So is realizing that other people are amused at or inspired by or curious about the same things you are.” – pg. 63

“When you watch a movie, what you’re looking for on a subconscious level is a piece of yourself to be reflected at you.” – pg. 75

“I don’t want to compete, I want to connect.” – pg. 90

“You connect with people when you’re authentic – when you do things the way that comes naturally.” – pg. 97

“I’m constantly trying to understand who I am so that I can turn the inspiration in my heart into something tangible, into a feeling that can be experienced by someone else.” – pg. 117

“You have to work with people who know how to work hard, and you have to work harder than everyone else.” – pg. 117

“If you want to do something, if you want to make something, if you want to create something, I’ve learned that you can’t be afraid to do it wrong.” – pg. 117

“It takes a lot of hard work to make it look easy.” – pg. 117

“One thing I’ve learned is that I have to let the feelings or ideas that inspire me become what they want to be.” – pg. 125

“You have to understand what makes it resonate.” – pg. 126

“Like Miles Davis said, ‘It’s not the notes you play, it’s the notes you don’t play.’ It’s the space between the notes that makes the music.” – pg. 135

“I said, ‘This is why [SexyBack is] going to work. It doesn’t sound like anybody. But it sounds like somebody.’ […] I wanted people to say those words, and feel like they were whoever that character was in that song, however they imagine him to be.” – pg. 140

“The coolest people are the ones who are doing something they’re excited about.” – pg. 164

“I would like to stay in a place where I don’t know exactly what I am, or what I am doing, because I would get to continually discover myself within that.” – pg. 211

“They want to pin you down so they can understand you. They want you to make it easy for them. They want you to walk in a straight line. I say, walk your own line.” – pg. 212

“If I could give a young artist advice about their influences, it would be this: Embrace them.” – pg. 228

“No matter what gets thrown at you, you catch it. You learn from it. And you figure out how to throw it back.” – pg. 228

“As I hit twenty-six and twenty-seven and twenty-eight, I was three different people within those years.” – pg. 234

“I used to think we want to be loved for what we are, but maybe more now, I think we want to be loved for what we aren’t. I think we want to be loved for all our fucked up shit.” – pg. 241

“Everything you’re doing as an adult is to try to heal whatever you’ve built up from our childhood.” – pg. 276

“No one had known but me. That had to change, and I was ending the silence right then and there before I let the secrecy go too far. It was such a relief to finally say those things out loud. But it was hard.” – pg. 28

“He later described watching his famous No. 3 car going around the track with someone else behind the wheel as being like ‘watching your wife go on a date with some other guy.’ I have to say that Dad’s assessment was pretty accurate.” – pg. 46

“The biggest lesson I had learned was that I would be honest with myself and everyone else if I ever found myself in that condition again.” – pg. 49

“We’d experienced something together, and we were stronger for it.” – pg. 51

“I told you my mind never stops. It’s always the loudest when I’m in bed.” – pg. 61

“I sound downright nostalgic. I think that’s a pretty big indicator that I was beginning to think about the end of my career, and it was probably happening much sooner than later.” – pg. 66

“I couldn’t make them understand my sense of urgency because I was never being fully honest with them.” – pg. 77

“I’m a lot of things, but sad isn’t one of them.” – pg. 86

“But if someone really loves you, then they also appreciate the things that you love. Amy knew from the very beginning that I loved racing. She was never going to be the person to get in the way of that, even during the times when racing didn’t love me back.” – pg. 106

“I didn’t let myself think about what-ifs when it came to the future. But I sure did a lot of thinking about the what-ifs of the past.” – pg. 129

“I have always had such a great appreciation for all of the people who work so hard just to take care of me and make sure I am where I’m supposed to be and do what I’m supposed to do when I get there.” – pg. 150

“Life’s hurdles come in a variety of forms, none of which are easy. You can prevail.” – pg. 178

“I’m looking forward to seeing you just because you’re you, for no other reason.” – pg. 57

“I don’t quite know who I am, and I have to find out.” – pg. 75

“I know that if I stay in this business I am in for even worse times, and this is something I have to decide for myself — is it all worth it?” – pg. 88

“For his whole life, it was about finding himself. Like the search for himself. And I think, when he was trying to figure out who he was as a comedian, he was trying to figure out himself. […] Garry in life, and in his act, would circle around things. And circle around things. And circle around things. He didn’t care how funny. […] The idea for him wasn’t just to kill in the room. It was to get closer to some idea that he had about himself.” – Ed Solomon, pg. 97

“He approached it from a place of How empty am I? Garry felt like he had finished a journey, and in a way, he was right. I think his whole methodology was to basically fall over the finish line for something.” – John Markus, pg. 110

“The theme itself was the structure of the show, which was breaking the conventions.” – pg. 168

“Don’t identify yourself with your career. You are you. You are not your job.” – pg. 193

“The human condition is hilariously awful.” – pg. 213

“[Garry] took everything that he didn’t want to be in himself and put it in this character. And then mocked it and said, Isn’t this a terrible way to live?” – Judd Apatow, pg. 253

“Garry was such a good writer that it was impossible to rise to his level and have him be satisfied. For the most part you were going to disappoint him because it was like painting with Picasso and he would go, ‘Why are you using red?’ And there was no way to anticipate exactly what he would like and then it would frustrate him.” – Judd Apatow, pg. 257

“It is a show about people trying to get love, and that shit gets in the way. They’re trying to figure out, with a little lack of awareness, how to get past that shit to get to the love.” – pg. 279

“There are people who seek truth and there are people who manipulate truth for their own good. That’s the conflict in life.” – pg. 295

“Just fake it. But Garry could not do that, and the fact that he would bring that to bear on the show, on that scene – his own deep insecurity about not being that hero – was so beautiful and heartbreaking to me.” – David Duchovny, pg. 325

“Garry always used people as touch points. To echolocate or to orient himself. He was just looking to get some sense of sonar about, like, Where am I?” – Ed Solomon, pg. 335

“Except what I really did is, I hadn’t really lived, I’d devoted myself to working, so then I started traveling and leading a life that involved relationships, good relationships with good people.” – pg. 351

“Because like all comics, at some point you start going, Can I survive without it? Who am I without it? […] It’s fucking terrifying. Because what if the train leaves and you can never get back on? That’s the key.” – Jim Carrey, pg. 353

“Garry was a guy that people asked about. If you were known as one of Garry’s friends, people would ask you about Garry.” – David Duchovny, pg. 370

“The journals are all about understanding that this path you and I are talking about now is the most important thing in life. And that show business or anything else is secondary.” – pg. 377

“He went on to explain what [the Ensō] meant for him: that things don’t always have to come to completion. It’s the process. […] He would talk about the process of getting from this point to this point. That’s where the intuition is, that’s where the wisdom is, that’s where you stumble and fall and you get back up.” – Beth D’Angelo, pg. 380

“They say if you worry about the past it’s depression, and if you stress about the future it’s anxiety, and that’s why it’s important to be in the moment.” – Sarah Silverman, pg. 387

“All my journey is is to be authentically who I am. Not trying to be somebody else under all circumstances. […] The whole world is confused because they’re trying to be somebody else. To be your true self takes enormous work.” – pg. 389

“The only UFOs we see are the ones that slow down for a moment to stare the way we all do when there’s an accident on the side of the road.” – pg. 393

“Give more. Give what you didn’t get. Love more. Drop the old story.” – pg. 412

“Humor comes from an objective place, which is where the meditation is: the silence.” – pg. 420

“I read somewhere that grief is not a sign of weakness. Grief is just the price you pay to love someone, and I could tell you that Garry was very, very expensive. And that fucker bankrupted me.” – Kevin Nealon, pg. 443

“The great ones show you what you can get away with. The shitty ones remind you what never to bother with.” – pg. 18

“Any true creative endeavor demands constant evolution, growth, experimentation, and challenge.” – pg. 24

“Movies, to him and the majority of the planet, are an enhancement to a life. The way a glass of wine complements a dinner. I’m the other way around. I’m the kind of person who eats a few bites of food so that my stomach can handle the full bottle of wine I’m about to drink.” – pg. 122

“And it hits me, sitting there with my friends, that for all of our bluster and detailed, exotic knowledge about film, we aren’t contributing anything to film.” – pg. 161

“For whatever it’s worth, it’s never too late – or in my case too early – to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit. Start whenever you want. You can change or stay the same: there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you’ve never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. And if you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.”

Link to video here.

“My advice to stuck writers who are on their own is to get unstuck by proving how bad you are. Stop trying to prove that you’re a good writer to yourself. That’s what’s probably got you stuck. Because no matter how good you get, you’re always going to think that you should be better than you are… because you want to be a good writer. And you will be by thinking that, but it’s not going to get you writing right now, and the only thing that’s going to make you get better is practicing. And the only thing you’re gonna be able to write right now is something worse than what you think you should be writing. So you have to stop thinking about the thing that you’re eventually gonna be able to do, and you have to start thinking about the thing that you’re terrified you will do – because that will go by very quickly.” – Dan Harmon

Another book that I didn’t find any good pull quotes in, but that I’m happy to have read.