Top 35 Philip Rosenthal Quotes

If you’re in the writer’s room, in any writer’s room in the world, before you pitch a joke or suggest an idea, you first think it’s funny and decide to say it out loud. The next step is for the people around you to accept it or reject it, before it ever sees the light of day, on film or in front of an audience.

Most people enjoy other people. Most people are human beings first. And affiliated with political parties second.

The artist is a combination of what’s happened to them in their lives and how it’s filtered through the way they think. That’s what makes me different than Samantha Brown or Anthony Bourdain.

Life is about travel, and beauty in life, the love we find, the joy we have the laughs we have together. That’s what I’m dedicating the rest of my life to.

If I’m trying to get you to travel by showing you the best places in the world to eat, I think enthusiasm goes a long way. Especially because I’m not a chef, I’m not an expert. I’m a tourist like you.

We live life in restaurants, its the center of social life, where we celebrate with family and friends, make new friends, travel without traveling, and of course, eat.

I am a terrible chef; I’m not a good cook. I don’t have the talent, the patience, the desire even to cook the way these great artists that I meet around the world cook, and I’m very, very happy to support them. I invest in restaurants because I love them so much.

Because you know what happens when you say ‘hello’ or ‘good morning?’ You make a connection. And isn’t that what being human is all about?

At Hofstra, I got a very well rounded education. I studied acting, but they wouldn’t let me just study acting. I had to take classes in play analysis, directing, producing. I had no idea this would ever be relevant. And, of course, it’s what I used the rest of my life.

If you’re any good at all at what you do, you get better the more you do it.

I can’t say it was always ice cream and rainbows in our house. We would yell and we would fight and I was a terrible child, and it was, but, on the other hand, laughs. I don’t think I’m alone in this.

Food is the great connector, and laughs are the cement. If we go out to eat and have a nice meal, that’s one thing. If we can share a laugh, now we’re friends.

I’ve inherited a Jewish sensibility and sense of humor from my parents and all those who came before me. All the Jewish comedians, character actors and writers I was exposed to also reminded me of my family in their sense of humor.

A good restaurant is like a vacation; it transports you, and it becomes a lot more than just about the food.

Of course, my whole theory of comedy is based in reality. The funniest stuff comes from real life.

The world’s pretty big. I have to see everything, do everything, eat everything. You’ll never be as young as you are right now, so while your legs still work, while you still have the breath in your lungs, go. At the end of our lives, we only regret the things we didn’t do.

When you’re first starting a show, any show, you learn what works and what doesn’t work, and it’s a kind of trial and error thing.

I don’t have the talent, the temperament, or the patience to be a great chef. I’d much rather order from someone who can really do it. I love restaurants. They make my life better.

You can’t kill people if you’re eating and laughing with them.

I’m trying to make connections. That’s all we do as human beings on the planet, isn’t it? We try to connect.

In certain cultures, they’ll eat an eyeball. I’m never gonna be that guy.

It’s our most underrated value, I think, as human beings is our sense of humor. It’s how we choose our friends.

I didn’t know what I was going to get. You never do, when you’re filming something for real.

The other stuff of marriage can fade a little bit, but as long as you can laugh with your partner, that’s everything because that’s what remains at the end of the day. I think that’s how we pick our friends and that’s how we ultimately pick who we marry.

Jose Andres has this brilliant plan which is that you employ the restaurants and restaurant workers, and then you pay them and then they feed people in need.

The highlight of my day is figuring out where I’m going to order dinner from in Los Angeles. As horrible as everything is, it’s the golden age of takeout. Restaurants are not splitting their focus between serving customers in-store and delivery and takeout.

So, I’ve got to have food, I’ve got to have humor. But these things are just the way in to what the show’s really about, I think, which is connecting with the people.

I don’t want to live in a world without the diner and the coffee shop and the mom and pop places, the ethnic restaurants.

Most restaurant people work much harder physically, on a daily basis, than most entertainers. Though most people in entertainment complain more.

That’s the secret to anything we write. You have to bring your experience to it. Otherwise, how do you expect anyone else to connect to it?

I was with a Russian family, and I couldn’t believe that the grandparents in Russia, first of all I was shocked and delighted to find that the Russian family that I’d been told was so different from the American family, was exactly the same.

And with regard to the Italian family we portrayed on ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ – Italians and Jews do share two traits: all problems are solved with food, and the mother never leaves you alone.

Two-thirds of us in the U.S. don’t have a passport. I’m here to say that travel is the best, most mind-expanding thing we can do with our hard-earned extra money.

I guess I happen to have one of those faces that just says everything I’m thinking. I guess it’s a gift, but I see it as a potential liability. It keeps me honest.

A puppy is the ultimate distraction.