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“The Truth” Book Quotes

I recently read “The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships” by Neil Strauss. Below are the quotes I found most interesting. If you like the quotes, please buy the book here.

The Truth“Intimacy is sharing your reality with someone else and knowing you’re safe, and them being able to share their reality with you and also be safe.” (50)

“But why should you have to make that sacrifice? A relationship should be about what you both want, not about what you both don’t want each other to have.” (54)

“Maybe that’s the female dilemma. She marries someone who’s giving her love and romance, but over time she gets taken for granted or turned into a maid or becomes a baby factory or gets cheated on. There’s not a single emotional need of hers that’s filled by her husband. Then he has the nerve to complain that sh’es not sexual or attractive when he’s drained the life out of her.” (83)

“Childhood trauma may sneak up from behind and fuck you in the ass when you grow up, but at least it leaves a tip on the nightstand.” (84)

“As a journalist, I’ve met a lot of so-called experts. Most are just people with a little experience and a lot of confidence who’ve given themselves a title with which they can fool the suggestible and dim-witted.” (85)

“Remember that humor is a wall. It’s a form of denial, just the same as repression, rationalization, globalization, and minimization.” (85)

“Are you relentlessly driving yourself to succeed and beating yourself up when you fail? Maybe that’s because when you were a teenager, your parents made you feel as if your worth as a human being was dependent on your grades, touchdowns, or accomplishments.” (88)

“Only when our love for someone exceeds our need for them do we have a shot at a genuine relationship together.” (97)

“All my anxiety and fear and guilt have peeled away, as if they were layers of clothing I didn’t know I was wearing. I thought they were part of my skin the whole time, but it runs out they were someone else’s hand-me-downs.” (105)

“I used to think that intelligence came from books and knowledge and rational thought. But that’s not intelligence: It’s just information and interpretation. Real intelligence is when your mind and your heart connect. That’s when you see the truth so clearly and unmistakably that you don’t have to think about it.” (105)

“Suddenly there seem to be very few adults in the world, just suffering children and overcompensating adolescents.” (109)

“Continuously complying with someone else’s priorities at the expense of my own is called pathological accommodation.” (134)

“If you add up all the people who’ve cheated in their relationships, that’s tens of millions of customers in the U.S. alone. Now add to that the even huger number of people who watch porn, and this is the smartest business plan in the world. If they turn being male and horny into some kind of brain cancer that’s covered by health insurance, they’ll be billionaires.” (139)

“Bill W., the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, was so notorious for cheating on his wife with attractive women who attended sobriety meetings that his colleagues later started calling this type of lechery the thirteenth step.” (143)

“No matter what your point of view may be, you can always find someone with a Ph.D to support it.” (144)

“It was the Catholic CHurch that began a relentless campaign to make monogamy and lifelong marriages inviolable institutions in the ninth century.” (163)

“We have so many contradictory, repressive, self-limiting beliefs about sexuality – and almost every one of them stems from a pathological need to dictate to someone else what they are and aren’t allowed to do with their body and heart.” (166)

“Loneliness is holding in a joke because you have no one to share it with.” (175)

“Perhaps just as there are cults around religion, so too are there cults around intimacy. But instead of monotheists, pantheists, and atheists, there are monogamists, polyamorists, and celibates. Each belief system comes with its own rituals, whether they be twelve steps, pujas, exclusivity, adultery, or arguing about money every night.” (182)

“Guys bring their dating problems on themselves. They program their daughter with an aversion to men and sex for fear that she’ll meet someone just like her father, then they meet someone else’s daughter and expect her to just jump into bed without anxiety or reservation.” (192)

“When your wife is tired of making the effort to understand you, when she’s fed up with hearing the same stories coming out of your mouth, when she holds so much resentment that it poisons every conversation, when she’s nicer to telemarketers than she is to you, when the only time she’s passionate with anyone anymore is when she’s criticizing you – that’s when you want a mistress.” (217)

“Once fear of loss is taken away, you get past jealousy.” (221)

“Some people live in an endless on-and-off relationship with control. Either they’re trying to exert it over their lives – by getting obsessive about a diet, a belief system, a phobia, a hobby, a need for order, a twelve-step program – or they’re completely out of control, making a mess of their lives.” (230)

“Any good Jungian therapist will tell you, you’re not supposed to repress the shadow in the first place. That’s when bad things happen. The goal is to integrate it.” (230)

“I used to think that a good relationship meant always getting along. But the secret, I realize, is that when one person shuts down or throws a fit, the other needs to stay in the adult ego state. If both people descended to the wounded child or adapted adolescent, that’s when all the forces of relationship drama and destruction are unleashed.” (246)

“Relationships are about giving, not getting.” (264)

“Life is a learned skill, but instead of teaching it, our culture force-fills developing minds with long division and capital cities-until, at the end of the mandatory period of bondage that’s hyperbolically called school, we’re sent into the world knowing little about it. And so, left on our own to figure out the most important parts of life, we make mistakes for years until, by the time we’ve learned enough from our stumbling to be effective human beings, it’s time for us to die.” (266)

“I have no idea what the boundary is between taking care of my emotions, wants, and needs and taking care of the emotions, wants, and needs of others.” (281)

“The problem many people have is that the exact quality that originally attracted them to their partner becomes a threat once a serious relationship beings.” (324)

“Most people seem to believe that if a relationship doesn’t last until death, it’s a failure. But the only relationship that’s truly a failure is one that lasts longer than it should. The success of a relationship should be measured by its depth, not by its length.” (334)

“Willard F. Harley writes that a man needs five basic things from his wife: sexual fulfillment, recreational companionship, physical attractiveness, domestic support, and admiration… A woman’s five basic needs are affection, conversation, honesty and openness, financial support, and family commitment.” (334)

“Try is the critical word here, because managing feelings is like tamping lions. No matter how successful you think you are, they’re still ultimately in control.” (342)

“life is a test and you pass if you can be true to yourself.” (347)

“Sex is easy to find – whether through game, money, chance, social proof, or charm. So are affairs, orgies, adventures, and three-month relationships-if you know where to look and are willing to go there. But love is rare.” (350)

“Evidently, if you have long receptors in the brain’s reward center for the hormone vasopressin, then you’re more likely to be monogamous. If not, then you’re a born player.” (363)

“The person who is too smart to love is truly an idiot.” (365)

“Our lives are like children’s building-block games in which objects are stacked one by one on top of each other. You can build the tower to a certain height without a problem, but as it continues to grow, eventually the instability of the foundation will cause everything to come tumbling down.” (366)

“love is when two (or more) hearts build a safe emotional, mental, and spiritual home that will stand strong no matter how much anyone changes on the inside or the outside. It demands only one things and expects only one thing: that each person be his or her own true self.” (381)

“I realize that I made a mistake by equating variety with freedom. I’m off all social and dating apps and websites. That’s freedom. Less than twenty people have my email address. That’s freedom. My phone barely makes a sound. that’s freedom.” (381)

“It turns out that leaving all my options open has kept me too busy juggling them to really live.” (381)

“The most caring thing to do when they’re upset is simply to ask if they want you to listen, to give advice, to give them space, or to give them loving touch.” (395)

“You can’t change a person unless they’re in diapers.” (400)

Harville Hendrix wrote that the unconscious purpose of a long-term relationship is to finish childhood.” (405)

“True intimacy is when partners stop living in the past – in their trauma history – and start having a relationship with each other in the present moment.” (406)

“In the end, love is not about finding the right person. It’s about becoming the right person>” (408)

“I’ve started thinking of the things my parents didn’t do perfectly as variables that make me an individual rather than as trauma that makes me a patient.” (416)

“It’s tragic. The wounds that humans get are so strong that they’re like robots operating on childhood programming.” (417)

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“When I Stop Talking, You’ll Know I’m Dead” Quotes

I recently read “When I Stop Talking, You’ll Know I’m Dead: Useful Stories From A Persuasive Man” by Jerry Weintraub (with Rich Cohen). Below are the quotes I found most interesting. If you like the quotes, buy the book here.

Jerry Weintraub“Though he was selling rubies and sapphires and I am selling Clooney, Pitt, and Damon, the trick is the same: packaging. You might have the greatest talent in the world, but it doesn’t matter if you can’t sell it.” (8)

“When you dig through all the craziness of my life, you’ll see that I’m just a guy from the Bronx who knows how to a attract a crowd.” (8)

“At some point, you forget the object, and the means becomes the end. You work for the joy of the work.” (16)

“Relationships are the only thing that really matters, in business and in life.” (17)

“I saw the neighborhood with new eyes. It was no longer just streets and stores: It was needs and opportuinties, money to be made. Once you see the world this way, things are never the same.” (19)

“As soon as you feel comfortable, that’s when it’s time to start over.” (27)

“Do not get attached to the world as it is, because the world is changing, something new is coming, every ten years a big hand comes down and sweeps the dishes off the table.” (38)

“Grunt jobs are often the most instructive – they allow you to flow through an organization unnoticed, a corpuscle or cell moving in and out of the heart and lungs.” (39)

“The job of an agent is, in part, anyway, to bullshit and schmooze: How better to find talent than by seeing who can talk his way into a career?” (42)

“An idea is only crazy, after all, until someone pulls it off.” (52)

“A lot depends on who you know, who you can get to. If you have people who will open the door for you, literally and figuratively, you can make a pitch. It’s in your hands from there.” (65)

“Ther person who makes it is the person who keeps on going after everyone else has quit. This is more important than intelligence, pedigree, even connections. Be dogged! Keep hitting that door until you bust it down! I have accomplished almost nothing on the first or second or even the third try – the breakthrough usually comes late, when everyone else has left the field.” (76)

“Let the other guy save face with his people, but keep score.” (98)

“What had started as a ploy to snap Frank out of his depression had turned into a major deal – handled wrong, it could turn into a major embarrassment.
At such times, I become obsessed with details. That’s where God is, so that’s where I go, with my notebook and phone numbers and head full of ideas. The people, the angles, the chairs – I wanted to get everything exactly right.” (111)

“it’s best, when selling something new, to envision the goal – let the entire world hear John Denver – then work your way back. How do we get there? Now and then, it happens by itself. This is a matter of luck, zeitgeist. More often, you have to be creative, crabwalk your way.” (121)

“You can evolve and grow but you should never resent your thing. If you look at how few artists actually make it, you will recognize that those trademarks, though in some ways limiting, are a gift of providence.” (121)

“Know what you’re buying. Was I buying Nashville? No, I was buying Robert Altman. I did not understand the script, but Altman did, and it was Altman who was going to make the movie.” (164)

“Work with the best people. If you have the best writers, the best actors, and the best director and fail, okay, fine, there is even something noble in it; but if you fail with garbage, then you are left with nothing to hang your spirits on.” (167)

“I don’t care what kind of cast you have, how beautifully the thing is shot – if you don’t have the right script, you’re going to fail.” (179)

“Being successful means filling your life with calls you want to return.” (204)

“You have to be willing to walk away from the most comfortably perch, precisely because it is the most comfortable.” (204)

“I believe in not getting hung up or paralyzed in a quest for perfection, but by the same token, you have to identify what is truly important and hold out until you can get those things right.” (209)

“People think that Hollywood and politics operate in different spheres – they don’t. The world is very small at the top, with a few thousand players running everything. For a producer, an actor, a banker, a politican – name your celebrity – crossing genres is less a matter of making connections with the leaders of other industries than of climbing high enough in your own to reach the place where all lines converge.” (229)

“From Kennedy I learned that the best politicians are not different from movie stars. They charm, communicate, command. THe good ones never make you feel isolated or small, as if they have something you don’t. Quit the opposite. They include you in their world, enlarge you, make you recognize the best qualities in yourself.” (230)

“This is why politicians seek out movie stars, and why movie stars want to become politicians. They seek the same target, which is the soul of the people.” (231)

“People judge on first sight, so make those surfaces shine.” (245)

“Steve Ross said, ‘What are you worrying about? You are a talented guy. That talent did not go away. The company went away? So what! Companies always go away. They’re a dime a dozen. It’s talent that counts!” (248)

“I don’t care if you get flattened a thousand times. As long as you get up that thousand and first time, you win. As Hemingway said, ‘You can never tell the quality of a bullfighter until that bullfighter has been gored.’” (248)

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“Even This I Get To Experience” Quotes

I recently read Even This I Get To Experience by Norman Lear. Below are the quotes I found most interesting. If you like the quotes, buy the book here.

Even This I Get To Experience“Alone with Hans Conried for a moment, I said, ‘You’re a major talent with a big reputation. Why do you agree to substitute for another actor without a single question, not about billing, or even money?’ His response became a marker along my career path. ‘I work to work, Norman, and the rest follows,’ he said, adding, ‘When it isn’t about the money, it’s funny how much seems to come your way.’” (139)

“Typical of Fred Allen was his attitude toward television. ‘It is called a medium because it is neither rare nor well-done.’ As to ‘the minds that control it,’ he said, ‘you could put them in the navel of a flea and still have room enough beside them for the heart of a network vice president.’” (147)

“As I would learn in the seventies, a dozen protest letters from among millions of viewers were considered a “flood” to an advertising agency.” (163)

“I learned from Kib that just about anything can be improved, and that reaching for perfection, not necessarily achieving it, was worth the effort.” (171)

“I dictated the first draft of everything I wrote.” (207)

“I told Richard Brooks I had never owned a camera, had never taken a lot of pictures, even of my children, and knew nothing about lenses and such. He asked me, in that case, why in hell I had been toying with the idea. I was stumped, and Richard answered his question for me: ‘Because you know what you want to see, don’t you?’
Oh, yes, I had to acknowledge, I knew exactly what I wanted to see.
‘Then get yourself a great cinematographer and tell him what you want.’ (225)

“Comedy with something serious on its mind works as a kind of intravenous to the mind and spirit. After he winces and laughs, what the individual makes of the material depends on the individual, but he has been reached.” (235)

“The audiences themselves taught me that you can get some wonderful laughs on the surface of anything with funny performers and good jokes, but if you want them laughing from the belly, you stand a better chance of achieving it if you can get them caring first.” (262)

“A relatively small group of agitators, especially when convinced God is on their side, can move corporate America to quake with fear and make decisions in total disregard of the Constitution that protects against such decisions.” (266)

“An audience is entertained when it’s involved to the point of laughters or tersa – ideally, both.” (266)

“There is stress, and then there is ‘joyful’ stress.” (279)

“A rabbi shared his Talmudic-style version of what I was attempting to convey: ‘A man should have a garment with two pockets. In the first pocket should be a piece of paper on which is written, ‘I am but dust and ashes.’ In the second should be a piece of paper on which is written, ‘For me the world was created.’” (402)

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“Ally” Quotes

I recently read “Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide” by Michael B. Oren. The quotes I found most interesting are below. If you like the quotes, please buy the book here.

 

Screen Shot 2015-09-22 at 6.25.05 PM“The Arabs were once dependent on American oil.” (39)

“The single best American insight into the Middle East – by former Union Army General-in-Chief George McClellan, who in 1874 warned that the United States would never understand its peoples “so long as we judge them by the rules we are accustomed to apply to ourselves.” (40)

“Accustomed to leaders like McCain, crusty old soldiers and seasoned pols, Israelis could not understand why Americans would choose a candidate lacking in any military, administrative, or foreign policy experience. Overweight, short, bald or bespectacled candidates stand little chance in a U.S. presidential election, but Israelis readily voted for portly Ariel Sharon, diminutive Ehud Barak, and Menachem Begin, who was both follically and visually challenged. Americans prefer their presidents to be eloquent, attractive, and preferably strong-jawed. Such qualities, in the life-and-death stakes of Israel, are irrelevant.” (43)

“Unlike AMericans who salute rank – a policeman is always “officer,” and a former president is still “Mr. President” – Israelis salute the person. The commander of the IDF is not called “general” and the chief justice of the SUpreme Court is not “your Honor.” Rather, they are addressed by their first names and, more frequently, their nicknames. This informality, a vestige perhaps of the biblical contempt for kings or the time when Israel’s population was minuscule, removes the interpersonal barriers. But it also erases private space.” (73)

“On American television, naive characters often had a southern drawl – but naifs on Israeli TV frequently sound like Americans.” (73)

“Far more than achieving a historic peace, possibly winning the Nobel Prize, and guaranteeing his place in diplomatic history, Abbas wanted to remain in power and stay alive.” (81)

“America’s new policies set conditions for talks that Israel could never meet and that Palestinians could not ignore. For the first time in the history of the U.S.-Israel alliance, the White House denied the validity of a previous presidential commitment.” (81)

“Henry Wotton observed, “An ambassador is a man of virtue sent abroad to lie for his country.” (89)

“Vernon Jordan told me that Obama was not Israel’s chief problem. Rather it was America’s economic crisis, which showed scant sign of abating, and its retreat from global leadership.” (93)

“Abracadabra means ‘I speak therefore I create.’”

“From Obama’s autobiographical works arose the image of an individual who had overcome adversity early in life, who displayed resilience and contempt for weakness but also a cold-blooded need for control. Projecting that need, not surprisingly, made his administration the most centralized since World War II, with many key decisions made in the Oval Office.” (97)

“Perhaps, too, Obama’s rejection by not one but two Muslim father figures informed his outreach to Islam.” (98)

“Instinctively, human beings seek order in the universe and, in politics, a clear formula for decision making. In reality, though, randomness – whims, quirks, gaffes – determines much of the relations between individuals, just as it does among nations.” (98)

“Israelis, very few of whom own firearms, frequently asked me why Americans needed so many guns when they had such a powerful army. “They need guns to protect them from the army,” I explained.” (106)

“in America, less than half of a percent of the population volunteers for the armed forces.” (108)

“Most Jewish holidays, an old joke goes, can be reduced to nine words: “They tried to kill us. We survived. Let’s eat.” (120)

“Golda Meir said, “We Jews have a secret weapon, we have nowhere else to go.” (135)

“Israelis have difficulty understanding America’s missionizing zeal and the belief – hardwired into the nation’s identity – that the United states was created not only for its own good but for all of humanity’s.” (196)

“I once heard Obama say, “Mediating between Israelis and Palestinians is harder than mediating between Democrats and Republicans.” (207)

“The last thing I expected was to be accosted by a ninety-year-old Jewish woman whose head barely reached my belt. “I like you, but I don’t like everything your country does,” she growled.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” I courteously replied, “but do you like everything your country does?”
“No.” She wagged her finger in my face. “But your country must be perfect.” (254)

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“Sick In The Head” Quotes

I recently read “Sick In The Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy” by Judd Apatow. Below are the quotes I found most interesting. Since it’s an interview book, the person who says the quote is listed in bold directly above the quote. If you like the quotes, please buy the book here.

Screen Shot 2015-09-22 at 6.19.37 PMJudd Apatow
“There’s this quote from John Cassavetes. He said, “I don’t care if you like me or hate me, I just want you to be thinking about me in ten years.”” (20)

“We were willing to go down for the show. It would have been awful if one of us said, “Let’s do all these changes – I really want to keep this job.” (97)

“You have to have a dream before you can execute it. That the people who succeed are the ones who think through what the next stages of their careers might be, and then work incredibly hard, day after day, to attain their goals. They don’t just flop around like fish. They have a vision, and they work their assess of to make it a reality.” (101)

“Do not be afraid to share your story, or to be vulnerable and open when telling it.” (130)

“It taps into the national neurosis in a way, where people are so happy to not be unhappy.” (223)

“My approach was always: This is an impossible job for Garry. I’m just going to try and help him in any way I can. But other people, when they would pitch a joke that didn’t get through, would get angry at Garry. And that was destructive.” (232)

“I shoot an enormous amount of film, and when I’m shooting what I think to myself is, If I hate this scene in editing, what would I wish I had? And so as I’m shooting, I’m shooting many permutations of the scene. It might be different lines or alts. If it’s too many, let me get something a little less mean. If it seems sentimental, I might get something edgy. I usually have like a million feet of film that in my head – I’ve edited every permutation and I’m just flipping things in and out so at the end of it I’m reasonably happy.” (264)

“So much of the conversation about diversity on TV should be about subscribers and advertisers. If the networks thought they could make more money creating shows with diverse casts they would do it in a second. They’ve clearly decided there’s not enough money in it. Every once in awhile they throw a bone to the idea of diversity, but it’s not a high priority.” (269)

“David Milch said executives don’t want to give notes and don’t want to stand behind their opinions. Executives want you to have enough power or reputation so that if you screw up, it’s your screw up, not theirs. The whole thing is inverted. Executives are looking for ways to not be responsible. And when you achieve a certain level of success, you’ll notice that some executives disappear because they have deniability about the process. “Of course I trusted Judd, he’s had enough success that I should let him do what he wants to do.” It’s actually harder for them to work with young people, because then they have to be responsible.” (270)

“Everybody told me you get five bombs before you go out of business. You can withstand five. your budget will get lower every time you have a bomb.” (270)

“Sometimes you make things and, the whole time, you’re aware that it might not make money, and yet it’s what you should be making at this moment in time and you hope it will connect in a big way because it is unique and personal. You have to try to do things that are more challenging to the audience. Those often become the biggest hits. Sometimes they don’t make a ton of money.” (271)

“I always heard that from Larry David. That was his big inspiration. He was willing to walk away from Seinfeld when they would give him bad notes.” (302)

“You write movies to figure out why you’re writing the movie.” (370)

“The thing that really makes a lot of these movies possible is that when we do the auditions, Seth reads with every actor trying to get a part in the movie. So by the time the movie is shot, he has read with like two hundred people. Through that process, we figure out who his character is and we try to problem-solve all the issues of the movie. So we’ll hold auditions for parts even though we kind of know who we want for the part, just to hear it with that person – and that almost becomes the rehearsal of the movie.” (427)

“With comedy, as soon as you succeed, you have some credibility and then they trust you more.” (442)

Jerry Seinfeld
“I wanted to be around it, you know. I never thought I’d be any good at it. But that turned out to be an advantage because it made me work harder than most other people.” (9)

Albert Brooks
“My friend Harry Nilsson used to say the definition of an artist was someone who rode way ahead of the herd and was sort of the lookout. Now you don’t have to be that, to be an artist. You can be right smack-dab in the middle of the herd. If you are, you’ll be the richest.” (28)

“I sum up all of show business in three words: Frank Sinatra Junior. People think there’s nepotism in show business. There’s no nepotism on the performing side, especially in comedy. I don’t know of any famous person that can tell an audience to laugh at their son.” (40)

“If I’ve learned anything – anything – getting older, it’s the value of moment-tomoment enjoyment. When I was young, all my career was “If I do well tonight, that means that Wednesday will be better. That means I can give this tape to mya gent and…” It was thiis ongoing chess game. And that is a really disappointing game, because when you get to checkmate, it never feels liek it should. And there’s another board that they never told you about. So if I come here and talk to you, if I have an enjoyable three hours, god damn it, that counts.” (45)

Chris Rock
“I did some things that sucked. But you learn more from fucking up than you do from success, unfortunately. And failure, if you don’t let it defeat you, is what fuels your future success.” (70)

“I did stand-up for fifteen years before I broke, you know.” (70)

Jason Segel
“We would get the script on a Friday, and Seth and James and I would get together at my house every Sunday, without fail, and do the scenes over and over and improve them and reallyt hink about them. We loved the show. And we took the opportunity really, really seriously.” (95)

Seth Rogen
“We felt if we made the scenes better on the weekend, if we came in with better jokes, they would film it. And they would! And we didn’t know it at the time, but that was completely unindicative of probably every other show that was on television.”

James L. Brooks
“I think the whole thing with writing – generally, you push and push and push and then, come on already, when do you pull? At a certain point, it pulls. I mean it’s pulling you forward and you’re not working so hard. You’re not laboring. You’re serving. Laboring becomes serving.” (145)

Jerry Seinfeld
“I was a minimalist from the beginning. I think that’s why I’ve done well as a comedian. If you always want less, in words as well as things, you’ll do well as a writer.” (186)

Jimmy Fallon
“We just went in knowing that we might get canceled. And if you’re going to go down, you have to go down doing what you like doing and what’s fun for you, because I don’t ever want ot do something painful and then have everyone go, “Hey, that works. Keep doing that painful thing for years.”” (216)

“Out of all the things I watched to get ready for this job, Larry Sanders was the ultimate – that’s the ultimate piece of advice I’d tell anyone to watch if you’re doing a talk show. It’s so real and so well done. That’s how a show gets made.” (221)

Jon Stewart
“Think of how much energy it takes to fuck with people. What if you try to use that energy to get the show done faster and better and get everybody out by seven? If I go into the morning meeting and I have clarity, and I can articulate that clarity, everybody’s day is easier. If that doesn’t happen, it’s my fault.” (231)

“Intention is a really big thing at this show. We always want to know where’s the intention, and, now, let’s find a path to that intention.” (232)

“It’s so important to remove preciousness and ownership. You have to invest everybody in the success of the show, and to let them feel good about their contribution to it without becoming the sole proprietor of a joke. There has to be an understanding that, that may be a great joke, but it might not serve the larger intention, or the narrative, of the show. You have to make sure that everybody feels invested without feeling that type of ownership.” (233)

Larry Gelbart
“I don’t worry about what they’ll get. I write for myself on the assumption that there are a number of people who have similar sensibilities and will appreciate what it is that I thought was good enough to present, not to them but to me.” (261)

Louis C.K.
“You want it to be compelling, that’s all. The likable thing is not really worth much. It’s a low-wattage bulb, you know.” (301)

“I never cared if I got cancelled. That’s the only thing that makes me do this stuff well, is I was willing to let the job go any day.” (302)

Mel Brooks
“John Calley said, “Mel, if you’re going to go up to the bell, ring it.” (335)

Michael O’Donoghue
“The way that you program is you put your best thing first, and your second-best thing second, and your third – because you’re just trying to fight sleep.” (353)

Mike Nichols
“I’m too good of a director to like me as an actor. I can get better people.” (366)

Roseanne Barr
“Today they want no part of anything having to do with class on TV. No part. Because it’s too true.” (399)

Spike Jonze
“When I’m making a movie, I want to be responsible and listen to the concerns of the people who gave me the money. But at a certain point, I have to put that all out of my mind because it’s not the responsibility of that movie. That movie’s responsibility is to be true to itself. If I don’t get to make another movie, I’ll make something else. I’ll make a movie for a milion dollars. I’ll go write a short story.” (440)

“I just don’t start to make another movie until I feel clean again from the last one.” (443)

“My job really isn’t to know how many people are going to like something. My job is to know what a movie’s about to me, and to know that I need to make it. It’s somebody else’s job to say, “okay, that budget makes sense or doesn’t make sense.” Once they gamble on it, that’s their gamble and I’m gonna be their partner in it, but we have to support each other.” (444)

“When I finished Her, I thought, Okay, I’ve done everything I can do to give this as much love as I could give it and now it’s gonna go off and be what it’s gonna be. If it gets loved I’ll be proud and if it gets hated it’ll hurt, but I also know that what I have done with my friends and collaborators will never change.” (447)

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