Top 144 Quotes & Sayings by Harold Ramis - Page 3

Analyze This is a good movie because Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal are really good. But without the material to put on the play, of course, they couldn't be good. For me, it starts with the writing.

Groundhog Day was pretty clean. It may have to do with some puritanical feeling that comedy is a forbidden pleasure in a certain way. They make you laugh, and laughter is somehow an inferior emotion to tragedy.

When you're young and you first see the extent and depth of the world's hypocrisy, it's fun to go after it. But by the time you're sixty, it's so commonplace. What's the point in ridiculing people anymore? Their existence itself is a sort of sick joke.

I've got to find a compromise where I don't feel compromised. I've got to find something equally good that they don't feel uncomfortable with. At a certain point, it's no longer about what I thought was right, but it's about this new discovery that happens with the actors. It's nice when the actor is also a writer.

If Chevy Chase had not been an actor, he might have been a very popular guy in advertising or whatever field he would have gone into, because of his charisma.

I have tons of rescuing fantasies based on the movies I saw when I was growing up. I wanted to be Robin Hood and the Three Musketeers and the Scarlet Pimpernel.

Some people have a fear of rejecting all the security that comes with family, church and state. They become fundamentalists.

I want to explore marriage without the usual Hallmark Card platitudes. Life is difficult, and I like movies that acknowledge that.

I try to measure the amount of truth in a work rather than just looking at the generic distinction between comedy and drama.

The comic impulse is sometimes a reaction to sadness. You feel like you can make one choice or the other.

The child says, "Well geesh, the institutions that I'm supposed to respect - the church and the government - they're telling me things that don't appear to be true. Either I'm crazy or they're crazy." That creates the Absurd Child. The Absurd Child is one who says, "Well, I think they're crazy." So you live in this state of alienation from your culture and your society and your family because you see this rampant bullshit around you.

When you're a big enough part of the process that the Writers Guild gives you a lot of credit, that's a good thing. It tells me that I've had a significant impact on the film as a writer.

It's a great luxury for me to be able to write on the films that I direct, and kind of a nice thing to be able to write enough to get credit, which is difficult for a director.

When you grow up in Chicago, your whole family is counting on you to go to college and do something distinguished. The last thing you're thinking is that you're going to make a career in show business.

Parents tell us things to protect us, or they educate us from their own misinformation or misconceptions.

I'm sure that the liability for doing a tracheotomy would be tremendous. You make one mistake, and it's over. Most doctors won't even do it.

Once you're alienated, you're on your own. That takes you to the world of the existential, where things just kind of float.

I always think that the writer is doing the vast majority of the director's work, in a sense. If you're a writer who is also going to direct, you're doing all your preparation: You're already visualizing everything, you're imagining how the lines are going to be read, you see the blocking in your head, and you know the rhythm and the pacing.

Where's the great pay? Where's the travel? Where's the Winnebago, Goddamnit!

At a certain point, you have to convince the actors that you've done the right thing. The way I work, if I can't convince them, I've got to move on. I can't coerce them or browbeat them.

When I've written for Bill Murray - I've written six films for him - people would read it and say, "Oh, that's so perfectly Bill." He'd read it and say, "Are you kidding? I can't say these words." So it's all about perception.

I loved writing and performing, but the idea of doing it for a living seemed so remote. But I eventually let it devolve to the point where it was the only thing I could do.

The trick with sequels is, you have to give people what they liked before, yet be innovative enough so they don't feel like they're seeing the same movie.

I have no trouble selling out—I’m a benevolent hack, in a certain way—but I want to pander for something I believe in.