Jerry Seinfeld quotes - page 8

I love advertising because I love lying. [pause for laughter] In advertising, everything is the way you wish it was. I don't care that it won't be like that when I actually get the product being advertised, because in between seeing the commercial and owning the thing, I'm happy! And that's all I want. (Jerry Seinfeld)
If your things don't make you happy, you're not getting the right things! View quote
Jerry Seinfeld
I was a minimalist from the beginning. I think that's why I've always done well as a comedian. [...] If you always want less, in words as well as things, you'll do well as a writer. View quote
Jerry Seinfeld
[Seinfeld] gave me everything, and that was always my thought when I was doing it. If I sacrifice every cell of energy that I have doing this, the rest of my life will be pretty good. So I just died on the shield. I went to the point where I thought, If I keep going, I could lose my sanity. That was how far I took it mentally. View quote
Jerry Seinfeld
Should I mention the other shows that were on at [the same time as Seinfeld]? 'Unsolved Mysteries'? 'Alf'? Where are they? Why is there no Hulu deal for them? View quote
Jerry Seinfeld
What I am good at -- and what every comedian is good at -- is knowing how to carefully manage an audience's attention span. View quote
Jerry Seinfeld
Audiences love to hear about something very stupid. Y'know? But I impose kind of an-- a very rigorous intellect to it. It's kind of philosophical, that joke about the-- y'know, "If it was really donut holes, the bag would be empty." View quote
Jerry Seinfeld
Comedy is a bit of a masochistic pursuit. If you don't have a masochistic streak, I don't think you can succeed at it, 'cause so much of it is painful. You have to kind of like it, in a sick way: y'know, that this really hurts. View quote
Jerry Seinfeld
I don't do movies because I think generally the size of that content does not lend itself to great comedy; it lends itself to people saying, "Hey, I made a movie." To me, the funniest things are shorter, so I think TV series or comedians in cars, I think I have a better chance of making you laugh. View quote
Jerry Seinfeld
"Funniest" is completely personal. Whoever you think is funniest, is funniest. View quote
Jerry Seinfeld
I have often wondered if there's a way to teach being funny or comedy, and George Stephanopoulos actually got me wound up enough at one point that we were going to contact, I think his name was Lee Bollinger, the president of Columbia, and we were gonna go in there, and I was going to teach a course on comedy. Because I know a lot about it, but I just don't know if it's teachable. (Jerry Seinfeld)
Learning to be a writer is the delta of success and failure in comedy. View quote
Jerry Seinfeld
I like the brutality of stand-up and the simple, boiled-down "it either lives or dies" of a joke. View quote
Jerry Seinfeld
I want comedians to always push themselves to be bigger than the niche that they start in. [...] You work to get broader and broader, without being generic or pandering. And to me, that is the mission. View quote
Jerry Seinfeld
I love art! It's great. But a guy with his hands on his face is not worth $100M. (laughs) "Screaming!" Okay? So, he's screaming. Fine. I'm not getting 100M value here: (imitates "The Scream") View quote
Jerry Seinfeld
A great joke and a great car: everything on it works. And there's nothing excessive that doesn't make sense or doesn't need to be there. [...] To me, the Speedster and a great piece of comedy are identical: they're perfectly minimalized ideas. View quote
Jerry Seinfeld
A comedian is a-- to me, a-- a full-fledged-- not only a monologist, but somebody who can really work a room, work a crowd, and has a real act. A comic? That's a-- like-- I think a notch down. View quote
Jerry Seinfeld
The secret to television is: the person who gets the opportunity wants to "re-form" this type of content to them, personally. View quote
Jerry Seinfeld
[Stand-up comedy] is the ultimate democracy. The laugh is the vote. View quote
Jerry Seinfeld
The real concept of [Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee] is: being a comedian is two things. One is: there's a show you do at night, for an audience, that you get paid for; but most of your life is hanging out during the day with other comedians, waiting for night... to do your show! [...] So, you have your set, but then, you hang out with these other people that are like yourself: they're a little socially awkward; they have this comedic aspect of their brain that they cannot turn off... and have difficulty having normal conversations with people, because we just want to say foul, obnoxious, hilarious things to make each other laugh. So, I thought "What if I tried to show people this side of the comedian life?" View quote
Jerry Seinfeld
On [Seinfeld], we were extremely meticulous in our scripting of every scene, every joke, every line. [...] When people came on that show, they were told by script supervisors "You don't change one comma", because that's-- the precision of joke-making generally requires that. (Jerry Seinfeld)
The only reason people still exist is phones need pockets to ride around in. View quote
Jerry Seinfeld
I want to look like my heroes from the '60s. I want to look like Frank Gorshin, and old George Carlin, and Alan King. I love[d] those guys. So, I wanted to be those guys. View quote
Jerry Seinfeld
The reason I got [Seinfeld] is: my manager, George Shapiro, wrote a note to Brandon Tartikoff, the President of NBC, and it was one sentence; he said "Call me a crazy guy, but I think some day Jerry Seinfeld's gonna be doing a series on NBC." Now, when he wrote that note, it was... 1988. I had been on The Tonight Show for seven years -- three times a year -- destroying. [...] And George still [had] to say to NBC "I know this sounds crazy...". I thought of this just the other week: "What was so crazy about the idea?" View quote
Jerry Seinfeld
I don't hear the applause when I come out [on stage]. I have no interest in that. 'Cause that's for the past. They're saying "We like what you've done in the past." And that's not what tonight's about. Tonight's about tonight. We gotta make this happen tonight. I want you to go home tonight and go "We saw a great show." View quote
Jerry Seinfeld