Dan Harmon Quotes - Page 2

I was playing the game where I was going to be a great TV or film writer some day and there was nothing else that I thought about, including other people.

With media, it's never bad-to-good. It's always just moving from different to different. Faster, more stuff, but there's always good, more good, and more bad.

There are no normal people, there are just different kinds of weird.

Everything I do, in the middle of it, I lose all objectivity. The business of comedy is kind of ridiculous in that respect. Your job is to have a lot of fun in a jar, then sell it. There's something inherently illogical and impossible about that, but that being said, this is as good as it gets.

I wish people used wishes to modify themselves instead of others. Wish to be low maintenance. Wish to be autonomous, even.

There's the same percentage of genius happening in both genders, but there's less women writing scripts and out there looking for the job.

I became part of a little study group in community college and started caring about strangers. It gave me insight into what an asshole I was. I saw that I had only lived half of a life.

I wish that television would stop selling our hatred of ourselves, and start seducing us with our love of ourselves.

I guess working in the legitimate industry, the best thing you can take away from it is acceptance of the incompetence that often surrounds you. No, that sounds horrible. The most important thing, I guess, is the fact that working in the legitimate industry, what I see all too often is people trying to interpret the wishes of the audience, which with today's technology, is all too easy to measure empirically.

Class clowns are never allowed to date anybody decent, but you don't get beaten up, you're invited to parties, and everybody likes you.

The concept of doing holiday episodes is a huge part of what's fantastic about doing TV. And viewers agree; you see the numbers going up for holiday episodes.

Garry Shandling has always been a pioneer of… meta entertainment. He's always been a defender of the creative right to use the frame as part of the painting.

My cat brought me a toy. I thanked her and threw it. She sat there gave me a look that made me realize people and dogs are the crazy ones.

I think thoughts in my head bounce around in my skull and, if they keep bouncing around in my skull, they get worse and worse. When they come out of my mouth, they make people happy.

I've never done well when I've been appreciated. I've done best when I'm targeted for death.

I grew up on network sitcoms. If those are gone when I'm 65 years old, I would never forgive myself for not stepping up to that plate, as often as possible. I'm already bummed out that DVDs are dying off because, in my 20s, those were a huge thing.

Whereas the health of an individual depends on the ego's regular descent and return to and from the unconscious, a society's longevity depends on actual people journeying into the unknown and returning with ideas.

I expect the audience to assume TV is stupid. I accept that it's my job to overcome it.

Audiences, as they get smaller, can intensify their relationship with the product, and so can the creative relationship with the people that you are serving. The good news is that, the more shows there are, the less the conglomerates have to gain by breaking the will of each individual creative.

Everyone knows that there are more people watching any given show than is being registered by the Nielsen system.

You have people saying two things that seem to contradict each other. One, that we live in a golden age of TV. The other, that television is dying. There's a reason for that. What we mean when we say it's dying is that it's already way past being fragmented into little chunks. Now it's being polarized into an aerosol mist.

I really like performing for people.

If somebody's cat happens to turn on the TV, my numbers can double. It's almost unrelated to what's really happening.

If your ratings are high and there’s money being made, you’re allowed to be a perfectionist in television.

Television is a populous, derivative, democratic medium.