Top 227 Quotes & Sayings by Judd Apatow - Page 3

Sometimes you need to get away for a few weeks just to figure out who you are again.

It's so funny, all the similarities that we have [with David Copperfield] of being obsessed young people and finding a way to be around the people doing what we want to do.

I'm always talking to people. It's not that complicated. I just find somebody and say, "Do you have any ideas." If they do, we just start thinking things around.

I still feel like a weird kid who is about to take a punch in the face. So, I think it's permanent.

'Deadwood.' I could have watched that forever.

It was always the most fun thing in the world to think of a joke area and talk about it with someone like Jim Carrey, and then he would get on stage fearlessly and tear the house down. That's something I always enjoyed. It also allowed me to not be terrified.

I always thought it was important to overdeliver, and when I got one of my first jobs, writing jokes for Garry Shandling when he was hosting the Grammys, I stayed up all night and wrote a hundred jokes, and I thought, "I'm always going to be the person that gives them more than they requested, and that's why they'll want to keep me around."

I like when people are very passionate about what they want to write about. Even if it's silly, you can be very passionate about it.

You should look up some of the reviews. The New York Times review is so over-the-top funny. It's hysterical. You should dig it out.

The little details really connect for people in ways I never realized before.I think that's why some of the movies have done well, because people are relating to things that I'm willing to expose.

Every time I'm in editing, there's always a moment where you think, "Maybe this should be six or seven minutes shorter, but I'm losing character and story that I think is important." When I like things, I'm not in a rush for them to end.

I hosted the Producer's Guild Awards, and it went well, and I was very happy in the moment, and it was a fun night. But I wake up the next day like someone who did crack the night before and told off the world, and I'm ashamed of the whole idea that anyone should listen to me, or the idea that I need that much approval.

There are people that entertainment is something they do at the end of a long hard day at work, and they want to be entertained and have it over quickly. They're like, "Entertain me fast!"

I was a guest on Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee with Jerry Seinfeld, and I interviewed him when I was 15 years old-those moments really blow your mind.

[My] dream writers room: "'Taxi.' I need to write for someone named Judd."

I like to make movies the way people made movies in the '70s, where they lived and died with these stories, and cared about them, and went to war for them, and they all said something they wanted to say.

Everyone is wounded. No one is healthy enough to never screw up, when you're in combat. But, I like to show that, and I like to show how people get back from that. You have to forgive each other. When you're in the middle of a long-term commitment, the essence of it is that everyone is going to have good days and bad days, and it's about how you continue to rejoin forces.

There are people who like short movies, and I think they should just watch our movies on DVD because they can pause, go to the bathroom, eat dinner, and come back to it.

Any music star would be singing about his lost love. A movie would be about a relatable incident; it wasn't an untouchable magic dragon box. It was something that people could relate to, and when I vanished a girl, it would be a story about a girl that left me, or a cutting into pieces would be a date with a magician. I wouldn't just vanish a girl in a shower, I would do the shower scene from Psycho [1960] with a [Alfred] Hitchcock cameo.

All my cuts are always about three hours, at the start, mainly because any scene in the movie that's 90 seconds, I probably shot a five-minute version of. If you just extrapolate that through the whole movie, I have a very long version of every scene, usually because, if there's one funny joke, I'll shoot five because I don't know if the one I like is going to work. I'll get back-ups because my biggest fear is to be in previews, testing the movie, and a joke doesn't work, but I have no way to fix it because I have no other line.

I used to tour a little bit with Jim Carrey and help him out on his first Showtime special.

In my work, there is a lot of storytelling. The storytelling is not a new thing. Back in the [Howard] Thurston days, the [Harry] Houdini days, the [Harry] Blackstone days, it was stories, but the stories were, "We're going to the Egyptian temples, and we're going to vanish the Prince of Thebes," and, "On my last trip to the Orient ..."

Right when I started getting solid was when I was offered a lot of writing work. And when The Ben Stiller Show was picked up, I realized there was no way for me to do stand-up three or four nights a week and run this television show with Ben. So that was the moment when I had to make a choice.

I was very combative as a creative person at that time [while The Ben Stiller Show]. I didn't understand how to play politics with the studios. I didn't know how to creatively collaborate with the people who were paying the bills, and that came up all the time on every project I was doing, and it took me a really long time to figure out how to collaborate in a healthy way.

I did get good enough to get on HBO's Young Comedians Special, but I certainly wasn't the person who got launched off of HBO's Young Comedians Special. That would be Ray Romano that year. I had some semi-intelligent jokes, but when people would see me, they would think, "Oh, that's a good writer." No one would ever have said, "Oh, that's a good performer."

I loved the idea that I could write a joke and someone else would have to take the risk of performing it.

I was listening to Tommy Chong talking about how he feels like there is like a creative flow happening and how certain people just know how to hook into the pipe. He played music with Jimi Hendrix and felt that he was personally connected to some higher intelligence or creativity.

There's something so scary about trying out new material and being completely comfortable jumping into the abyss with a comedic idea.

I think we all have a love/hate relationship with the media.

Literally, my last call was with David Blaine, congratulating him on his show. I have a camaraderie with David.

I hear Amy Schumer on Howard Stern, and I think, "I wish there was a movie that starred her, because she's so interesting," and then at some point I go, "I guess I have to get involved, because it's not happening right now. Maybe I should help try to make that happen."

I don't really get attached to anything. I'm pretty brutal about cutting stuff. With each successful movie, I've discovered anything that's not connected to the immediate story is going to be cut out of it.

I love Coldplay. I love Steely Dan - Steely Dan's probably one of my top three bands of all time.

I was in the recording studio when Pink was recording for a part of the gay rights anthem. It was just amazing to watch her perform. She's just such an incredible singer. She so funny, and so smart, yet she's doing it for this silly, silly song.

As a kid, I was obsessed with the Who. They were the most important band to me. Songs like "I'm One" helped me get through high school.

I don't think I'm going to get so mature that I lose touch with the whatever wounded part of myself that feels the need to be funny. I'm already old enough that I realize that's not going to happen.

Deer are like dogs. Except for Bambi, they're pretty personality-less.

I always thought that Seth [Rogen] was a fun, caustic, bombastic, sweet, underdog-type of person that I would root for the way you used to root for Bill Murray or John Candy in "Stripes." Seth had something that very few people you encounter have: he had a writer's mind and he had his own comic point of view.

A lot of the turning points happen in high school and in college, and it defines a lot of how you see the world and how you decide to defend yourself from the world. Some people - their defense mechanism is, I'm really smart or I'm sexy or I'm the leader. And other people - they hide or they make jokes.

Maybe you just get so attached to the music of your youth that you think it's better than what's coming out now.

I remember before I did my HBO special, Chris [Rock] screamed at me - in a loving way, but still. He was like, "You need to do 200 shows in a row and a month straight on the road before you even think about recording a special!" And I had literally booked two weeks on the road and then went right into the recording. It put me in a panic, but it also made me work harder and made me realize that everyone works differently, and that's okay.

When you make a movie, you just send it off into the world. You never actually live it with the crowd.

No matter how much you love someone, on a bad day, you could say something terrible. All of the little things that you are saving to say, that you're mad about but never express, sometimes come out, all at once. We all have these terrible moments. That's just part of being human.

It's funny when people debate about music, because they get so passionate about what they enjoy.

I started a radio show where I interviewed comics. And I interviewed Leno and Seinfeld and John Candy and Father Guido Sarducci and Garry Shandling, all when I was 16. And they kind of told me what to do.

I need to find people who I respect so I can respect them, and they'll like being respected so they'll respect me, and that's like a marriage.

Parents don't realize that when they teach you about the Holocaust too early, it ruins you for life.

I've always appreciated people like Graham Parker or Loudon Wainwright III, who spend their entire lives writing songs and working their asses off just to have complete artistic freedom. They're just sharing their lives with you through their music. That's the same kind of work that I'm trying to do, in my own weird way.

There's nothing more fun than debating and defending your taste in music.

You know, I'm a big comedy fan.

I get the most starstruck around musicians. I get tongue-tied and don't know what to say. I'm so jealous of them. When you make a movie, you're constructing something - it's a little bit like making an album. But after musicians make an album, they get to perform it live and experience it in front of a crowd.

If you watch the arcs of so many comedians, at some point, they just become themselves.

I have to go back to vinyl every once in awhile, even if my kids don't want to hear it. I'm much more likely to be listening to Wilco or the Avett Brothers.

You hear people say: "One day, when I'm in a good position I can make my passion project." I've seen a lot of people get into that position and not make it.

It's funny, now there are so many bands that I can never remember any of their names. Maybe it's because I'm old.

I used to scream at everybody at the beginning of my career. I'd get really emotional. I'd project all my issues about my parents and safety onto the executives, so every conversation where they gave a note was life or death and you don't love me.

When I notice that all the beats sound exactly the same, it starts to wear on me.

I have to make good things so good comedians want to talk to me.

I try to just save a fresh, clear head for whoever I'm working with, so hopefully it's helpful that there's someone who doesn't have to sit in the editing room for 12 hours a day, and who's blinded by the massive footage and options that they have.

The thing that ruined your life makes you good at your work. And then you get rewarded at work, so you don't bother to fix it in your life.