Larry Gelbart Quotes

#1. Achingly funny as it was, Larry Gelbart's writing gave off sparks that turned a hard light on the way we are.

Alan Alda

#2. To write is to feel ... with your heart, your mind, and your soul.

Paula Baker

#3. I think technology is such that we can reach new heights but we need some of the basics of the pre-technological age. It's counter-productive to be able to type a hundred words a minute but not know what the words mean.

Larry Gelbart

#4. I'm a recovering optimist.

Larry Gelbart

#5. The subtle differences in language and humor that get lost in translation, for example, make it almost impossible for big companies to do something that will appeal at home and abroad.

Larry Gelbart

#6. If the cockroaches survive and we don't, what does that say about human intelligence?

Marty Rubin

#7. If Hitler's still alive, I hope he's out of town with a musical.

Larry Gelbart

#8. This was a characteroloical prelude, but it wasn't chemical or somatic. It was the anatomy of melancholy, not the anatomy of his brain.

Jeffrey Eugenides

#9. I don't think you can name a good picture where the production or the possible promotion isn't "cast-contingent." That means the film needs not just star power but star box office power.

Larry Gelbart

#10. I think the greatest imagination we can exercise is one that imagines how someone else feels. Because you know how you feel, but so often we attribute our own feelings on to someone else.

Larry Gelbart

#11. The Amazon is still burning; we just don't hear the smoke detectors anymore.

Larry Gelbart

#12. Your style is formed by what you can't do.

Larry Gelbart

#13. I think it makes people frustrated when they have to live their actual lives commercial free and they can't just magically wind up at the part with the happy ending.

Larry Gelbart

#14. Today's audience knows more about what's on television than what's in life.

Larry Gelbart

#15. The only way to avoid age discrimination in Hollywood is to die young.

Larry Gelbart

#16. I write what I write and I honestly don't care if it gets on or not. I'm writing to see if I can find out some of what I think about any number of situations. I work it out in the writing.

Larry Gelbart

#17. One doesn't have a sense of humor. It has you.

Larry Gelbart

#18. I am on sort of a diet in terms of the Internet. It's the sheer quantity. It's the Niagara of opinion, of information. It's not that I have any kind of compassion fatigue. I just insist on having a life.

Larry Gelbart

#19. Why is life so complicated ... ?' I asked.
'To keep us from being bored,' he said.

Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

#20. Reality television is less honest than YouTube. YouTube is the real reality.

Larry Gelbart

#21. Contrary to popular belief, it's not the legs that go first; it's remembering the word for legs.

Larry Gelbart

#22. Great men too make mistakes, and many among them do it so often that one is almost tempted to call them little men.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

#23. If vaudeville had died, television was the box they put it in.

Larry Gelbart

#24. Television is a weapon of mass distractrion.

Larry Gelbart

#25. We may be born equal but we're not equally talented.

Larry Gelbart

#26. One does not have humor. It has you.

Larry Gelbart

#27. The public, hearing pop music, is, without knowing it, also soaking up jazz.

Norman Granz

#28. Marriage isn't all that it's cracked up to be. Let me tell you, honestly. Marriage is probably the chief cause of divorce.

Larry Gelbart

#29. I refuse to do anything easy. I'm writing for the smartest person out there. I'm not equating myself with the smartest person out there, but hopefully I'm writing to say you're not alone. I'm not alone. We're not alone.

Larry Gelbart

#30. You can write something that has continuity, but it makes happy endings all the more ridiculous.

Larry Gelbart