Dan Harmon Quotes

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

With an animated show you can make a banana purple. You can put three hats on a cowboy. That would require several days of stitching, in live-action, that you wouldn't be able to afford. I mean, you can just do tons and tons and tons.

TV tends to be like, if you're lucky, it's like Las Vegas. You can't get out. There's always another pitch meeting. They keep you on the casino floor. If I'm unlucky, if I'm lucky enough to be unlucky, I would love to write a movie.

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.

What's important is passion, investment, and people laughing out loud as they work.

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.

There are two kinds of people in this world. There are the people that will have you think that there are two kinds of people in this world, and there are the 'good; people. There is no good, there is no evil, there is just a war going on between the people that want you to think there's a war going on and the people that know there doesn't have to be one.

The public's perception of your show is what it is, and you don't get to complain how people perceive your show or talk about it.

Always hedge your bets. That's how I do it. I lay all my bets on what I can contribute, and suffer no illusions that I'm generating stuff by myself.

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

I'd just love to sit at home, wake up at 10AM, go to my own office with my dog, and write a movie. I don't know if I'm capable of doing that though. I think I'll just end up playing Minecraft and self-destructing.

None of us are bad people. We float around and we run across each other and we learn about ourselves, and we make mistakes and we do great things. We hurt others, we hurt ourselves, we make others happy and we please ourselves. We can and should forgive ourselves and each other for that.

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

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

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.

There's a fine line between a stream of consciousness and a babbling brook to nowhere.

Find your voice, shout it from the rooftops, and keep doing it until the people that are looking for you find you.

I love 30 Rock. It's one of my favorite shows. It's certainly the gold standard of comedy writing.

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 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.

I am absolutely and inherently self-destructive in that I am always making sure I'm doing what I want to do.

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

Don't be so hard on yourself, don't put pressure on yourself, life is just a chain of experiments and results, and you'll be perfect when you're dead.

Storytelling comes naturally to humans, but since we live in an unnatural world, we sometimes need a little help doing what we'd naturally do.

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 want to touch people but if I touch them in real life they'll slap me.' That's what writing isit's a gross person getting a hug.

The most rewarding part of writing for TV is - a year ago I would have said it's just watching it on TV, it's just having been done with it and then collecting all that energy.

It was never my direct intention to do anything particularly medium-defying.

There are no normal people, there are just different kinds of weird, all of it is human and all humanity is better than everything inhuman. So I urge you to keep expressing yourself as honestly as you can, and know that the backpedals and second-guesses really aren't necessary - they don't hurt but they're wasting your time - because when you are truly human, as we all are, and when that is your honest message to anyone, you are beyond reproach, there is no way to screw it up.

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.

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.

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.

Television is a populous, derivative, democratic medium.

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

Pretty sad. Pretty lonely. But that's how I prefer it? I quess? I guess. It's a good guess. It's the best quess ever.

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.

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.

When you are in the 8 o'clock position, you can either be a cultural phenomenon, or you're endangered. It's a tough time slot.

I was raised on NBC television.

It's so difficult to write good music. It's also really difficult to think about how to do it without violating the sanctity of the fourth wall.

I really like performing for people.

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

The language we're exchanging, the fillings in our teeth, the pavement on the road outside, everywhere you look, for better or for worse, you're going to see evidence that accepting reality is not a human's tendency, and not what we're good at, and not, in my speculation, what God or Natural Selection hired us to do. We've been hired, by this universe, to dream, to aspire, to make things that weren't real real - and because that involves a lot of failure, we're damn good at doing that, too.

I don't really have a lot of appropriate feelings for people on an individual basis, but I've always wanted to make people happy.

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

I surround myself with loyalists and people that I would die for. I just would rather die than make bad stuff for people because I'm a terrible dishwasher and a terrible lover and a terrible pet owner.

I don't think it's going to be possible for the next generation of writers to tell stories without telling stories about telling stories.

I say what's in my head, and I'm on honest ground. That is worth so much, and I think it does make my job, as a writer, easier. It makes it possible for me to give people stuff that they like.