A Quote by Dan Harmon

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've never felt like I was in the cookie business. I've always been in a feel good feeling business. My job is to sell joy. My job is to sell happiness. My job is to sell an experience.
America is a very venal place; everything has to be sold there. You can repackage your own s**t and sell it if it is marketed in the right way. The motivation is to sell. It's so illogical and strange to me. It's such a disposable culture and yet I feel comfortable being American.
There's been more than one time when I've said something, and sort of the middle of what I've said is not said but thought, and therefore assumed to be understood, which is a ridiculous assumption on my part, but sometimes gets me in trouble.
There is a kind of a cascading chain, ... If one can't sell, then that business doesn't buy and that means the next business doesn't sell, and the previous business doesn't sell, and so on.
I'd love to work on something that gets some type of critical respect. This business is sometimes so brutal - you work on something for months and really feel like the project is good and you're doing the best work you can, and then it just gets hammered by critics. It's such a bummer sometimes, because everything seems to build up to the release and a couple of bad reviews can make it seem like it was all a waste, which you know it wasn't.
Comedy makes everything accessible. Watching the news is kind of like being fed your evening pill. What's fun about it? Nothing. And so if you can get news and information about things going on in the world through a comic platform, everything's going to connect.
A friend of mine who is in the publishing business knew I was writing a book, and he said, 'Have you said anything yet about the good guy? Because I know you spend so much time with the bad guys.' Because they're fun. So then you have to make the good guy fun, in order to compete. That's the challenge.
I never think of this business as fun. I don't know why. I think I've actually said something about it being fun, but I don't think of it that way. It's not fun, doing it. It's joyful, it's passionate, it's rewarding, it's a pursuit of truth, but I don't think of it as fun. It's not a game.
If you don't have the good fortune to work a lot then you take any job you get offered, whether it's a good job, fun job, a bad job, horrible job, whatever, you just take what you need to take. But I'm lucky in that - at the moment anyway and hopefully forever, but who knows - I get the chance to pick jobs for the kick of it and the fun.
American business at this point is really about developing an idea, making it profitable, selling it while it's profitable and then getting out or diversifying. It's just about sucking everything up. My idea was: Enjoy baking, sell your bread, people like it, sell more. Keep the bakery going because you're making good food and people are happy.
My doctor told me that I really should lose some weight. "You're mildly obese," he said. And I thought, "Well, who couldn't afford to lose 20 or 30 pounds?" He said, "Well, a person in your category." I said, "What is that category, doctor?" He said, "Well, you're what I call upwardly middle aged." And I said, "I forgive you for everything."
When I got the job I thought about her a lot. Not only was I getting a great job in a really good movie, but it was with Lindsay Lohan. She's so famous and I don't have any of that, I have never experienced that kind of intense scrutiny that she's under, so of course I wondered what it would be like acting opposite her. I can tell you that it's like being with The Beatles. You cannot fathom the kind of attention she gets. It's mind boogling.
If you're looking for investment you've got to think about what the investor gets from being involved with your business. A lot of people think about what they're getting from their point of view but not about what the investor gets out of a deal.
My deal is that I pay more attention to whatever job I have than the relationships I have. Now, if I had considered my job to be a wife and mother, then I would have been pretty good at it. But I didn't consider it a job. I thought it was like brushing your teeth - it's not fun, it's just something you do to keep your teeth from falling out.
I think when you start comedy there are some real advantages to being single and in a low-paid job. You have nothing to lose. It's not like I was a well-paid lawyer when I began. I was earning so little I was able to sell myself to it.
Everything I played, I kind of found a way to be pretty good at. My mom always said, 'If you're not good at something, then don't do it.'
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