“No one else I knew ever seemed to get themselves in the situations I did. I was officially thirty and wondered if there was an age when this kind of behavior should be curved.” – pg. 136
“It’s been my experience that people who make proclamations about themselves are usually the opposite of what they claim to be.” – pg. 175
“[I wondered] why I agree to pick people up from the airport. It really is a ridiculous activity if you’re not sleeping with the person.” – pg. 207
“It’s always the couples who are the friendliest who have the most problems. It makes sense, if you think about it. They’re so miserable with each other, of course they’re fascinated by you.” – pg. 41
“Pain is pain any way you slice it.” – pg. 47
“One of my girlfriends was getting married. This was becoming an annoying pattern.” – pg. 61
“If you pretend to be excited about something you’re not looking forward to, eventually you will start to believe it.” – pg. 146
“I’d been thinking about screenwriting for a while. […] I thought about it every time I saw a movie that made me feel something. Even more when I saw one that didn’t.” – pg. 9
“The beauty of long drives alone in the car is that it’s the best place to think.” – pg. 11
“I normally didn’t do writerly things in public, such as taking a pad and pen to a coffeehouse. […] It seemed pretentious and calculated and Hemingwayish.” – pg. 36
“You can’t be a major dreamer without having a healthy ego.” – pg. 62
“You see, it really doesn’t matter if your idea is good or bad because the powers that be are past the point of recognizing either.” – pg. 105
“If you write honestly, then you’re a good writer and you’ll succeed.” – pg. 152
“This much I know about creative endeavors: They’re out of your control.” – pg. 280
“Sunshine is like anything else. When you don’t have it all the time, it’s better.” – pg. 307
“It’s so important to get out of your hometown and get the fuck away from your family.” – pg. 61
“Comedy requires taking risks.” – pg. 68
“You have to go through multiple relationships to find the right one. You both will probably go through three to five serious relationships in your life before finding your person.” – pg. 149
“It was clear how you grabbed audiences and held on to them: by telling them those stories they would fall in love with.” – pg. 14
“Do not ever be afraid to ask a question when you don’t understand something. Never be hesitant about it. Never be embarrassed about it. And if the first person you ask doesn’t want to give you the answer, then find someone else who will help. Because it’s always on you to figure it out and get it right.” – pg. 28
“[Saturday Night Live] was the opposite of predictable, and the epitome of original.” – pg. 82
“If my career had taught me anything, it was that the only way to achieve something fantastic was to take big chances.” – pg. 96
“Television can be an emotional business with emotional people. You’re best off understanding and even appreciating that notion if you want to make something great.” – pg. 103
“I had to take chances; I had to believe that my ideas could work.” – pg. 122
“Television, entertainment, movies – all of show business – isn’t about shows and programs; it’s about relationships.” Sam Weisbord to Dick Ebersol, pg. 123
“If you find a job you love, don’t try to satiate your ego by finding something else. Just realize how lucky you are, and have a great time working your ass off from there.” – pg. 188
“The creative people are the people who feed any show business enterprise; who put asses in seats, or eyeballs in front of television sets.” – pg. 199
“You couldn’t bullshit them, but you could inspire them to want to be part of our success.” – pg. 204
“Not every risk is going to pay off. But that doesn’t mean you don’t take them.” – Jack Immelt, pg. 230
“Through all my jobs, in and out of sports, there was something appealing about not just going all over the globe, but doing it through unusual, sometimes crazy means.” – pg. 247
“On the road, in any city, and in any country, one of my favorite things to do was simple: walk around.” – pg. 247
“For all the unpredictability and adventure that defined my work life, what’s ironic is that anyone who knows me well would also tell you how much I love familiarity and routine in the rest of my life. […] I like what I know, and I find comfort in what I can count on.” – pg. 248
“It was okay to cry, it was okay to be sad – okay, even, to be sad for the rest of our lives. But we couldn’t be mad. Anger would cloud our ability to mourn and find some improbably path to healing.” – Dick Ebersol on Susan’s mantra, pg. 262
“It would be a terrible mistake if you, Dick, were ever to entertain any thought such as ‘I should have been home more,’ or ‘I worked too much and that was bad.’ Because your passion and creativity and vision and successes and devotion to the details of your work and all the joy you got from that was a pulse of our house. The heartbeat – we all thrived on it and learned from it and it rubbed off on us.” – Susan Ebersol, pg. 265
“His sister turned and asked , point-blank, why he cared so much about the game. ‘I wanted to be able to speak [Dad’s] language. He loves baseball. So I wanted to love baseball.'” – Dick Ebersol on Teddy, pg. 270
“He was the embodiment of everything great about the NFL – the passion it stokes in people, the significance it’s had on American culture, the joy it’s brought.” – Dick Ebersol on Brett Favre, pg. 299
“My only real goal in all of this is to leave the sport bigger and better than I was lucky enough to find it.” – Michael Phelps, pg. 312
“It had been a long, long time since the Olympics had first captured my imagination that way. And it was amazing to think how, for all the ways the world had changed, that was still exactly the same.” – pg. 323
“Everything he wrote still holds up today. Build up characters. Bring the atmosphere to life. Make people feel like they’re in the stadiums themselves. Tell a great story.” – on Roone Arledge’s 1962 memo, pg. 347
“There’s still something magical about events, and entertainers, that can bring millions, if not billions, together. They show us how much we share, rather than how different we are. How much we have in common, rather than how much we disagree.” – pg. 348
“They may say it isn’t as good as it was then – but they still tune in.” – pg. 10
“There were people who thought every paycheck was their last. At the same time, there was this infectiousness. It was a joyous thing, really. Everybody had been fired up with this concept of the inmates running the asylum, and the idea that the writers were the most important aspect of the show.” – Neil Levy, pg. 51
“You could make up a whole world out of what I didn’t know back then.” – Lorne Michaels, pg. 72
“You know what made me good was simply not giving a flying fuck.” – Chevy Chase, pg. 78
“If you did a show you really cared about, it didn’t matter if anybody watched it.” – Lorne Michaels, pg. 87
“I think the ending to a movie is hard, the ending to a television show, the ending to anything is tough. You kind of want to wrap everything up with a bow and button it all up and hark back to what you have done before and end on a high note or great joke. And that’s not always possible.” – Dan Aykroyd, pg. 127
“Lorne’s contribution was, which was integral to the whole thing, not only in selecting people but in creating an atmosphere where people could endure the pressure.”– James Signorelli, pg. 127
“You have to know each cast member to get the best work that you can out of them.” – Al Franken, pg. 130
“To me, comedy writing was all about flirting with taboos and seeing how far you could push it.” – Rosie Schuster, pg. 138
“As a result, because she made other people look good, she herself looked fantastic.” – Bill Murray on Gilda Radner, pg. 147
“The amount of things that have to come together for something to be good is just staggering. And the fact that there’s anything good at all is just amazing.” – Lorne Michaels, pg. 171
“I came from a car culture. Not to be able to drive myself around is like imprisonment to me.” – Laraine Newman, pg. 186
“I have quite a fondness for that period, those first five years. You were doing something that you knew was something.” – Howard Shore, pg. 186
“‘Our competition is sleep,’ as one cast member put it.” – pg. 192
“I think a lot of people were saying, ‘Why couldn’t I have been on the good show?’ And it’s like, why don’t you make a good show yourself? […] I think in a weird way it’s a privilege to stand on your own feet and not coast on somebody else’s reputation.” – Pam Norris, pg. 197
“After a very successful show, the next guy usually fails and then the third guy comes in, takes over, and succeeds.” – Jean Doumanian, pg. 203
“People just aren’t that clever, and sometimes things that look like clever schemes are just people stumbling over their own feet.” – Pam Norris, pg. 203
“If you want to quit that show, you’ve got to be crazy. Here’s the thing you can’t lose sight of: […] You have a chance to reach some hearts and minds out there. You have a chance to say something. You cannot walk away from this.” – John Belushi to Tim Kazurinsky, pg. 215
“I always thought it was like final exams. I was always exhausted and never home, But then the more I did it, the more I was able to figure out how to do it and not work so insanely.” – Martin Short, pg. 267
“It’s over before it seems like you started it. You have to go with the flow. And you can’t sit there and think about it too much, you have to just accept a lot of things in trust and go for it.” – Danny Devito, pg. 286
“Lorne Michaels loves a lot of things. He’s not in love with anything but Saturday Night Live. That’s it. It’s that simple. That’s why he came back.” – Bernie Brillstein, pg. 294
“Someone very powerful told me, ‘You don’t want to do Saturday Night Live. Someody who wants to be you wants to do Saturday Night Live.‘” – Herb Sargent, pg. 295
“I feel with my life, somebody’s been so generous with experiences for me – whosever controlling it. […] I feel maybe I’m getting this all now and quickly because there’s not going to be a whole lot later.” – Gilda Radner, pg. 355
“The reason I hired you guys was original thought. Anybody can do impressions.” – Lorne Michaels to Chris Rock, pg. 363
“The show was a major part of the life of every one of the kids I grew up with.” – Adam Sandler, pg. 363
“There’s no such thing as your whole career being decided in one night.” – Lisa Kudrow, pg. 366
“One thing I’ve always respected about Lorne is that he has this real hard-on for any kind of censorship. He does not want anything to be censored. He wants things to happen as they happen.” – John Zonars, pg. 370
“Sandler brought a really great breath of fresh air to the show and relaxed the show when it was getting kind of uptight and formulaic.” – Bob Odenkirk, pg. 380
“I had a four person office: me, Sandler, Farley, and Spade, we shared an office. And those are my boys for life. For life. I love those guys.” – Chris Rock, pg. 386
“We lived for comedy. We still do.” – Adam Sandler, pg. 387
“I always thought that if comedy is going to confuse anybody, by rights it should be the stupider people.” – James Downey, pg. 395
“It’s a remarkable place, because if you survive that process, you’re probably going to be able to survive the next ten years of your career.” – Fred Wolf, pg. 398
“A lot of people just wanted to use that show as a stepping-stone to get out and move on. But I just loved being there.” – Kevin Nealon, pg. 404
“I used to say that you only get so many hours that you can be with someone in a lifetime, and you can kind of use it all up in a very intense four or five years or you can spread it over a lifetime. Friendship really needs distance and space.” – Lorne Michaels, pg. 416
“It takes me a long time to understand why I don’t like people. I think it’s a problem I haven’t solved.” – Lorne Michaels, pg. 426
“When Saturday Night Live is really good, they do care what the audience thinks. And when Saturday Night Live is not really good, they’re kind of doing it for themselves and their pals.” – Don Ohlmeyer, pg. 431
“As long as six guys on a couch behind that camera that I was looking into laughed, and I knew those guys, then I was there.” – Chevy Chase, pg. 431
“I hate applause. […] That’s all they’re doing, saying they agree with your viewpoint. And while you can applaud voluntarily, you can’t laugh voluntarily – you have to laugh involuntarily – so I hate when an audience applauds.” – Norm Macdonald, pg. 432
“Part of being a comedian is the delusion that you should be onstage at all times.” – Colin Quinn, pg. 439
“The first cast of Saturday Night Live had lacked one thing that all subsequent groups would enjoy: access to the work of predecessors. […] They made it up as they went along, and many improvisations born of desperation became traditions and tenets.” – pg. 452
“One prevailing frustration is kind of like not knowing where you’ll be the same time next year. But I guess a lot of show business is like that.” – Horatio Sanz, pg. 459
“It’s kind of an amazing thing when you’re with a writer. You see the joy in the human face, and not because of what they’re writing, or the job of writing it, but the excitement that they’re going to unveil a good reference or a good bit, kind of like a mad scientist rubbing his hands together and giggling: ‘If this monster works, I’m a genius, and if it fails, it’s back to the drawing board.’ […] Writing itself is tedious. No one ever really enjoys writing until it’s done. But you’re excited to see people read it, excited to think, ‘Will they get it?'” – Jimmy Fallon, pg. 477
“Sometimes they just don’t want to see accuracy, they just want it to be funny.” – Darrell Hammond, pg. 487
“We got to walk away not just with the side effect of success, but with the experience. Having the experience was probably the greatest thing.” – Bill Murray, pg. 498
“That’s why I found the twenty-fifth anniversary reunion so emotional, because all these people from different eras who had gone through this quagmire and had been in the trenches and everything, they just forgot about it and were feeling real celebratory.” – Tom Hanks, pg. 500
“If there’s something you’re good at, you wind up doing it.” – Mike Shoemaker, pg. 503
“I knew I couldn’t move people back to normal, but maybe we could at least get them to start doing the things they normally did, to be able to deal with some of the pain they were going through.” – Rudolph Giuliani, pg. 505
“What’s truly amazing is that it’s reinvented itself so many, many, many times.” – Warren Littlefield, pg. 512
“My theory is that you kind of stop growing at the age you are when you become famous. Because what happens is, people start removing all your obstacles, and if you have no obstacles you don’t know who you are.” – Gwyneth Paltrow, pg. 519
“When I have the opportunity during the course of a season, I say, ‘I envy you so much. Because from this point on, you’re going to look at the world totally different. Now the world gets to service you. All you have to do is see it.’ […] That’s the greatest gift I think a writer can have, is to actually observe the human condition, to actually put it down on paper and give emotion to it.” – Ken Aymong, pg. 521
“Lorne has no interest in what you want to talk about. None. What Lorne thinks is, if you need him to help you solve it, it’s not worth solving.” – James Signorelli, pg. 553
“I talked to him about what he thought of this idea we were considering, and he said, ‘There’s no way anybody will ever watch sports twenty-four hours a day.'” – Stuart Evey, pg. 19
“You’ve got three things we can’t teach: your enthusiasm, your knowledge, and you’re not afraid to be candid.” – Scotty Connal to Dick Vitale, pg. 56
“Chet asked me to give kind of a motivational speech at the first Christmas party, in ’79. […] My little speech was, ‘This is the beginning. You’re on the ground floor and those of you who stick it out are going to be glad you did.'” – Jim Simpson, pg. 57
“Try to keep it as fun as you can, because you know what? You’re doing television. It’s sports; it should be fun.” – Drew Esocoff, pg. 70
“It doesn’t matter what the pay is or what the job is. You should make a career decision, not a money decision.” – George Bodenheimer, pg. 86
“We just don’t sell. I’m sure it’s a very fair offer, and I’m sure in ten years I may come back and say, ‘How foolish, if only we’d taken that money,’ but I’m afraid we’re just not, and never have been, sellers.” – Don Ohlmeyer, pg. 137
“We all felt as if we had really made it, and made an impact with what we were putting on the air.” – Bob Rauscher, pg. 152
“My dad always told me, when you’re going to make a big decision in life, geographically, professionally, whatever, if you can, take a week and really think hard about what it is that you’re going to be doing.” – Tom Jackson, pg. 152
“I refused to play the cards the way they needed to be played to get there, particularly the politicking.” – Terry Lingner, pg. 214
“We have a common goal: to give the person at home the best show, and to enjoy the camaraderie of everybody along the way.” – Mike Tirico, pg. 243
“Take time every day to laugh, to think, to cry.” – Jim Valvano, pg. 252
“We’re a pretty good operation that work together and play together.” – Bill Lamb, pg. 278
“Everything he did when he was in there was personal – how he wrote it, how he covered it, how he looked at you, everything was on his heart, or on his sleeve. And that was what made him great there.” – Dan Patrick on Keith Olbermann, pg. 285
“At ESPN, you find the other people who cried when a team lost. If you had never cried when your team lost, you really shouldn’t work at ESPN. You just won’t get it.” – Matt Sandulli, pg. 301
“We never look at ESPN as a television network; ESPN is a sports fan. We should always approach the advertising, whether it’s of an event or of our own shows, like we are a sports fan talking about sports as opposed to a network promoting a show.” – Judy Fearing, pg. 312
“One of the interesting things that’s happened over time is that having your own Sportscenter spot as an athlete has become a little bit of a badge.” – Kevin Proudfoot, pg. 315
“I think the ‘This is Sportscenter‘ campaign is really what changed everything, because it made us look human.” – Gary Miller, pg. 322
“The truth is, I actually cheer for the players more than I cheer for colors.” – Bill Clement, pg. 324
“You’re too talented to let these guys break you. You know there’s other stuff coming, just ride it out.” – Keith Olbermann to Craig Kilborn, pg. 371
“You are always more valuable to them when you leave; that’s the great thing about leaving.” – Suzy Kolber, pg. 386
“As a journalist, you know how great it feels when you get something that nobody else can get.” – Jimmy Roberts, pg. 389
“You can be really funny, and even cutting, without being mean.” – Gary Belsky, pg. 423
“When the Lord wants to punish you, He answers your prayers.” – Howard Katz, pg. 443
“I just stared at the schedule and thought, ‘Wow! That’s pretty fucking cool. I’m going to be on Sportscenter.’ I looked around the newsroom, gave myself 30 seconds of celebration, then put my head back down and went back to work.” – Steve Berthiaume, pg. 463
“You can’t just put people together in a booth and say, ‘Have chemistry.’ It doesn’t work that way.” – Tony Kornheiser, pg. 485
“The idea of Around the Horn was that no one ever wins a sports argument.” – Max Kellerman, pg. 492
“I love telling stories that nobody else has.” – Andrea Kremer, pg. 512
“The thing that bothered me the most with all of that was not the criticism the company took for various media folks who give their opinions. That comes with the territory. What bothered me was that it hurt our employees, and to me, there’s really nothing that’s worth that.” – George Bodenheimer, pg. 524
“That was really part of the problem of being last. They weren’t able to set the table. They were only able to react to what was left.” – Steve Bornstein, pg. 569
“I have a whole diary I kept during that time. My wife said, ‘Sandy, you’re having these calls every day, which are mind-boggling. Write everything down.'” – Sandy Montag, pg. 586
“I had the two best guys who had ever done it, and all they cared about was getting it right.” – Fred Gaudelli, pg. 591
“ESPN to a degree catches itself in the middle of sports and entertainment. It knows that it does sports better than anybody in the world, but it keeps wanting to sort of reach over into this world of entertainment and see if it can combine both in certain areas, which is part of the progressive nature of ESPN.” – Joe Theismann, pg. 614
“What everybody at ESPN has tried to do […] is recapture the Howard Cosell, Don Meredith, Frank Gifford booth. And you can’t do that. I think you have to allow people to create their own identities.” – Joe Theismann, pg. 614
“Please make it feel like you guys are having fun, [like] the best place in the world to be would be in the next seat.” – John Skipper, pg. 624
“These guys, you know, they see pretty girls every day. They don’t care. They don’t have time for it. They know how hard I work.” – Erin Andrews, pg. 629
“I’m a big fan of the game, but I’m also a student of the game. You have to do your homework.” – Dwyane Wade, pg. 633
“People who overreact tend almost always to be wrong.” – Colin Cowherd, pg. 637
“The funniest thing about athletes and even entertainers is that they all say the same two things: first, they don’t care what the media says about them – they never watch or read anything about themselves and it doesn’t matter or motivate them at all; and second, it’s not about the money. Well, they’re lying on both.” – Jalen Rose, pg. 638
“And that’s my goal: just to tell it like I see it, and if it’s good, it’s good, and if it’s bad, it’s bad, and nothing personal.” – Kirk Herbstreit, pg. 645
“Leadership means people follow you. If you’re leading for a good cause, that’s great. But if people are following you for a bad cause, that’s bad.” – Lou Holtz, pg. 655
“If I’m going to worry about everybody’s negative opinion of me, I’m not going to get anything done. I’m not going to sit here and try to defend myself because it’s too much time wasted. I have too many other things to do that take up my time.” – Mel Kiper Jr., pg. 657
“A lot of Americans use sports to unwind, and I’m no different.” – Barack Obama, pg. 679
“When I was a player, I always remembered to speak about a teammate in the media like he was standing right next to me.” – Orel Hershiser, pg. 684
“Fear has to drive you if you are a sportswriter in this day and time.” Stephen A. Smith, pg. 688
“Andre Iguodala nicknamed me ‘the diabolical hater.’ I always kid back, ‘Nope, I’m the diabolical truth teller.'” – Skip Bayless, pg. 707
“My mom used to say to me all the time, ‘You like being liked.’ And yes, I think that probably comes from insecurity. […] But I learned to be very self-reliant, and because of that, I think I tend to be defiant.” – Colin Cowherd, pg. 716
“Sometimes you’re so hellbent on making sure things fit, you miss out on all the fun when they don’t.”
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