I recently read “It’s Always Something” by Gilda Radner. Here’s the quotes I found interesting:
“The news never meant anything to us on “SNL” because w always looked at it just to see how to satirize it. Nothing in our personal lives was sacred. We used all of it for material on the show. The most important thing was those ninety minutes live on Saturday night. So what if your whole world was falling apart as long as you could find a joke in it and make up a scene.” (99)
“It’s such an act of optimism to get up every day and get through a day and enjoy it and laugh and do all that without thinking about death.” (101)
“There’s that joke about the optimist who says, “If the house is full of shit there must be a pony somewhere.” (145)
“In the early day of “Saturday Night Live” we had our innocence and we believed in making comedy and making each other laugh. We were just working together to entertain, like kids playing together.” (153)
“While we have the gift of life, it seems to me the only tragedy is to allow part of us to die – whether it is our spirit, our creativity or our glorious uniqueness.” (153)
“All the material for our show came from improvisation. We wrote our sketches on our feet in front of the audience, and rewrote them by repeating performances… I was a wreck.. It was the most stressful thing you could ever imagine. But there’s no other training ground like it for comedy writers and performers.” (164)
“You feel completely in control when you hear a wave of laughter coming back at you that you have caused. Probably that’s why people in comedy can be so neurotic and have so many problems. Sometimes we talk about it as a need to be loved, but I think with me it was also a need to control. I’ll make the decision whether to come out in my underwear or not.” (183)
“People whimpering and hovering over me made me feel like I was dying. People yelling at me made me feel alive.” (199)
“I’ve learned what I can control is whether I am going to live a day in fear and depression and panic, or whether I am going to attack the day and make it as good a day, as wonderful day, as I can.” (200)
“Cancer is what you make of it. If you make it a horrible situation, so will everyone around you. I put humor into it and I opened the technicians up to their humor.” (206)
“People who know Bob, the head radiation technician, say he should be on television, but I said, “No, he should be in the radiation therapy department cause that is where his humor is needed most.” (207)
