Top 40 Garry Shandling Quotes

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

I’d like to do more acting.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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?

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

I’m not a party guy. I don’t carouse very much.

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.

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.