Larry Gelbart Quotations

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

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

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

A lot of people credit him with being terribly influential in their careers,

Talk about fulfilling a campaign promise, ... M*A*S*H.

In a world that operates at least 50 percent on fear, he was very confident,

Most jokes state a bitter truth.

I'm a recovering optimist.

A war is like when it rains in New York and everybody crowds into doorways, ya know? And they all get chummy together. Perfect strangers. The only difference, of course, is in a war it's also raining on the other side of the street and the people who are chummy over there are trying to kill the people who are over here who are chums.

Television is a weapon of mass distractrion.

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

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

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

One does not have humor. It has you.

I never watched Friends, maybe because it was written by people straight out of college....The only way to avoid age discrimination in Hollywood is to die young.

Marriage is probably the chief cause of divorce.

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

I know one thing - very few writers in Southern California get to write what they want to write. We are more or less worker ants, working for either film companies or tv companies or Internet companies. We do a lot of assigned work. Feelings hardly ever enter into it. If they do, they tend to be on a sort of soap opera level.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

I love to play with language; make it do tricks, turn a word inside out to see if it's got a hidden meaning tucked away somewhere, or perhaps find that it's capable of an extra entendre or two. . . . Plotting is nothing I did, or do, naturally. It is the hardest part of the writing process. No matter how many times you plot a script successfully, the next one, representing new and uncharted territory, convinces you that you really don't know how to do it at all.

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.

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.

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.

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

You could say the network was beating up on you, and he acted as a very benign and positive kind of chief justice.