Garry Shandling Quotes

When I give notes on a script, I say, 'Guys, I may drift, but it's part of the process.' So I'm aware that I'm drifting, but I'm grabbing a lot of stuff.

- Garry Shandling

You know it's funny that none of the regular late-night shows now use guest hosts the way Johnny did. No one talks about it much, but it's curious that they don't do it. They would each have to be asked the reason why they don't.

- Garry Shandling

The only way I would go back to hosting would be if it were something entirely new. It would prevent me from wanting to host a standard-fare kind of talk show.

- Garry Shandling

I have spent a lot of time studying the issue of relationships, how I grew up, my parents' influence on me. I've talked to a therapist,; I've looked inward spiritually at myself, and what it seems to come down to is that I'm a Sagittarius. Please don't make me reveal more than that. It's tough enough as it is.

- Garry Shandling

Nice guys finish first. If you don't know that, then you don't know where the finish line is.

- Garry Shandling

My second or third year in the engineering department, I got very frustrated, and I sat down with myself and had a soul-searching conversation with myself and said, 'What I'd really like to do is see if I can write comedy.' ... I moved to L.A. stone cold. Didn't know anybody; didn't know how to go about it. Really started from scratch.

- Garry Shandling

I once made love for an hour and fifteen minutes, but it was the night the clocks are set ahead.

- Garry Shandling

My first 'Tonight Show' was just one of those things - I mean this seriously - a cosmic, meant-to-be coming together of circumstance. You walk out there to do your first 'Tonight Show': Is the audience going to be hot? Are you going to be on fire? It's like an athlete: Are you going to have your moves at a peak?

- Garry Shandling

My first appearance as a guest on The Tonight Show was in '81.

- Garry Shandling

Carol Burnett was particularly funny. She swore for the first time on television on Larry Sanders.

- Garry Shandling

I play basketball on Sundays and I'm a very spiritual guy; I read a lot of Eastern philosophy and I meditate.

- Garry Shandling

Humor is a wonderful way to deal with our suffering because if we can laugh at our troubles, we can feel better. Thich Nhat Hanh is a special man who has helped millions with their suffering with incredible technique. But he doesn't know real suffering, because he has not dated as much as I have.

- Garry Shandling

I'm dating a woman now who, evidently, is unaware of it.

- Garry Shandling

'The Larry Sanders Show,' it's actually about love, which would sound like a paradox at first. But if that love didn't exist, the darker attitudes would not play. You would have a one-dimensional, cynical show, which I don't think the show was.

- Garry Shandling

I don't know why men are so fascinated with television and I think it has something to do with - if I may judge from my own father, who used to sit and stare at the TV while my mother was speaking to him - I think that's a man's way of tuning out.

- Garry Shandling

I don't think I'm severely politically active. I care deeply, and I have my strong personal beliefs. I think America is dancing on thin ice. But I think it's bigger even than a political issue. I wonder about the evolution of the human race and spirit and what our goals and reasons for living are.

- Garry Shandling

Without comedy as a defense mechanism I wouldn't be able to survive.

- Garry Shandling

The art of boxing is seeing spaces and being able to take shots. The hitting and being hit have to become one. Your reactions have to be so in the moment. There's no time to think.

- Garry Shandling

I've never had anyone put on a puppet show to convince me of anything. And I've done a lot of stuff. I don't know that I would put the puppets on when I was pitching a show. This was the head of the studio putting a puppet show on. And I'll tell you, he wasn't bad.

- Garry Shandling

I watch the news, which is its own reality show. I love 'Curb Your Enthusiasm.' I love it because it's funny and because I realize that I'm happier than Larry David.

- Garry Shandling

There's a good chance that if you're talking to me when I'm snoring, it means I'm bored.

- Garry Shandling

Men who betray women also betray other men. Women shouldn't feel so special.

- Garry Shandling

To be thrown onto the stand-up stage is an experience that you cannot fathom until you're actually there, because there's no place to go, and everyone is looking at you and you can't even see them because of the lights. And yet you have to manage to start talking and be funny on top of it.

- Garry Shandling

I had no idea who I was when I started. I was frightened to death and had no natural performing skills.

- Garry Shandling

Dogs are not people. Be leery of any woman who refers to her dogs as her 'kids,' because you'll only end up paying for their schooling.

- Garry Shandling

I may discuss love, and I don't mind if two men fall in love, fine. Two women, fine. But I flinch when I think of two Jewish women getting together and having a child because the idea of having two Jewish mothers makes my head explode. I have one; I couldn't handle two.

- Garry Shandling

Nobody can write better jokes putting me down than me.

- Garry Shandling

I have this very abstract idea in my head. I wouldn't even want to call it stand-up, because stand-up conjures in one's mind a comedian with a microphone standing onstage under a spotlight telling jokes to an audience. The direction I'm going in is eventually, you won't know if it's a joke or not.

- Garry Shandling

First of all, I'm not the kind of guy that likes to rehash the show and so forth and so on.

- Garry Shandling

I've been on a state of high alert since high school. I didn't need 9/11 to remind me that we live on a ball of flame.

- Garry Shandling

It takes me so long to get tired of a man. It's women that are the problem. Don't get me wrong. I think men have their problems just as much as women.

- Garry Shandling

I'm proud of Larry Sanders and proud of every single person who went on that journey. It's a very special show to me, and I've learned a lot of lessons from it. I need to find something where I can learn some more lessons, and then I'll do that project.

- Garry Shandling

That's what we were exploring on 'Larry Sanders' - the human qualities that have brought us to where we are now in the world: the addiction to needing more and wanting more and talking more. We were examining the labels put on success - is it successful to be on TV every day, to be famous, to have a paycheck?

- Garry Shandling

I keep my scrapbooks in the car. When I come to a stoplight, I start looking through my past. Sometimes I wish the red lights were longer.

- Garry Shandling

I guess he wanted to see a little more sexual activity because in real life, in bed I think less is more and let the woman come to me. Frankly, I don't even need a woman there.

- Garry Shandling

Which is, I'm an optimist that two people can be together to work out their conflicts. And that commitment, I think, might be what love is, because they both grow from their relationship.

- Garry Shandling

I think it's one of the main negative emotional ingredients that fuels show business, because there's so much at stake and the fear of failure looms large.

- Garry Shandling

I am interested in how human beings react to crisis and conflict.

- Garry Shandling

I think sometimes I should do more carousing, because I don't do much and maybe it would be fun occasionally. It's hard for me to have fun and I'm a serious thinker and a searcher and funny from the front.

- Garry Shandling

I actually think I'm more of a turtle than Verne is. Where Verne is up on two legs and moving at full speed and doesn't pull his head into the shell very often, I in reality was five or ten minutes later to every recording session.

- Garry Shandling

I like to talk on the cell when I do interviews. That way, I double my chances of getting brain cancer: from the cell phone, and from the questions.

- Garry Shandling

I am pretty tenacious as a perfectionist in terms of getting something right.

- Garry Shandling

When I don't have a good time, it's usually because there's a stiffness that stifles creativity.

- Garry Shandling

Dr. Phil is hiding something. Otherwise, why wouldn't he use his last name?

- Garry Shandling

Because I am afraid of commitment. This movie certainly has some bearing and is some reflection of my real feeling about relationships, because I do have commitment issues. My friends tell me I have intimacy problems, but they don't know me, so who cares what they think?

- Garry Shandling

I once saw an elaborate landscape in a gallery, drawn in pencil, that took my breath away. Then I realized the artist probably didn't have enough confidence to use a pen.

- Garry Shandling

I'm too shy to express my sexual needs except over the phone to people I don't know.

- Garry Shandling

Women need to know that not all guys are going to hurt them the way that the guy did before they started dating me. I know guys I wouldn't go out with.

- Garry Shandling

I don't know how to ground myself without the other actor present.

- Garry Shandling

Some people think the world will end in 2012. I think we've got until 2014. I'm an optimist.

- Garry Shandling

But I really like hosting, I think it's a strength of mine. It allows me to improvise, and I love the spontaneity of that, and I think I'm funny behind the desk when interviewing someone.

- Garry Shandling

I enjoy 'The Apprentice' and the one that's called 'Take My Life' and the other one called 'Stop Hitting Me.'

- Garry Shandling

I feel that everything I do in my life I can do in a shorter time than most men can. It's the quality, not the quantity.

- Garry Shandling

Everyone at a party is uncomfortable. Knowing that makes me more comfortable.

- Garry Shandling

Here's the thing - I'm single, I haven't been married, I don't have kids yet. If I do have kids I would be interested to see them in my life, so here's a movie for kids and I'm in there and I'm supposed to be kind of funny for kids.

- Garry Shandling

I started boxing for exercise, and on the very first day, the trainer got in the ring with me and said, 'Whoever controls the breathing in the ring controls the fight.' I immediately passed out.

- Garry Shandling

I think I look great in green, and I'm going to start wearing more green.

- Garry Shandling

I've always felt that the truth is in the silence.

- Garry Shandling

It's not the hair on your head that matters. It's the kind of hair you have inside.

- Garry Shandling

I practice safe sex - I use an airbag.

- Garry Shandling

My friends tell me I have an intimacy problem. But they don't really know me.

- Garry Shandling

I like going into nature and that's where I'm happiest.

- Garry Shandling