Jerry Seinfeld Quotes

I would go so far as to say that was the key to the entire [Seinfeld] show, was that we really felt like together we were funny, and then the audience felt it, and that's how you can somehow catch lightning in a bottle.

The reason I got [Seinfeld] is: my manager, George Shapiro, wrote a note to Brandon Tartikoff, the President of NBC, and it was one sentence; he said "Call me a crazy guy, but I think some day Jerry Seinfeld's gonna be doing a series on NBC." Now, when he wrote that note, it was... 1988. I had been on The Tonight Show for seven years -- three times a year -- destroying. [...] And George still [had] to say to NBC "I know this sounds crazy...". I thought of this just the other week: "What was so crazy about the idea?"

One of the things that the comedian mindset requires is laziness.

[Larry and I] never obsess over anything that isn't mundane.

Men, as an organization, are getting more women than any other group working anywhere in the world today! Wherever women are, we have men looking into the situation right now. We explored the Earth looking for women... even went to the Moon just to see if there [were] any women there. That's why we brought that little car. Why would you bring a car, unless there's some chance of going on a date?

Life is truly a ride. We're all strapped in and no one can stop it. When the doctor slaps your behind, he's ripping your ticket and away you go. As you make each passage from youth to adulthood to maturity, sometimes you put your arms up and scream, sometimes you just hang on to that bar in front of you. But the ride is the thing. I think the most you can hope for at the end of life is that your hair's messed, you're out of breath, and you didn't throw up.

The pitch for [Seinfeld], the real pitch, when Larry and I went to NBC in 1988, was we want to show how a comedian gets his material. The show about nothing was just a joke in an episode many years later, and Larry and I to this day are surprised that it caught on as a way that people describe the show, because to us it's the opposite of that.

All dads dress in the style of the last good year of their lives.

That's the first thing an audience wants to feel when someone gets up on a stage: "Does this person know what they're doing?" "'Cause if they do, then I can relax." And when you're trying to elicit laughter, that's-- they have to be relaxed. If they're worried about you, the laughs are harder to get.

Inexplicable malevolence was our favorite thing [on Seinfeld]. There's no reason-- There was never a reason I didn't like Newman; there was no reason. "We just think it's better to hate this guy."

[Stand-up is] kind of like catching bullets between your teeth. If you're gonna do it right, it would be something to learn it and then not make a career out of it.

I still think everything has its life cycle and if you respect it, people enjoy it longer.

"I do the exact same thing now as I did when I was 21 in 1975. I sit and play with ideas. I'm never not working on material. Every second of my existence I'm thinking "Could I do something with that". It's like going into the gym everyday. You walk in everyday and say "Oh jeeez... I gotta do this again?!".

Your blessing in life is when you find the torture you're comfortable with. That's marriage, kids, work, exercise... It is not eating the food you wanna eat...

Find the torture you 're comfortable with and you'll do well."

Do the people that work in these little shops in the airport have any idea what the prices are every place else in the world? "Yeah, $14, tuna sandwich. We think that's fair."

I actually have quite a bit of [the Seinfeld set], and we're looking for a museum that wants to display it. I have the couch, I have the two blue stools, I have the table and chairs; the coolest thing I have is the door, which we never repainted in nine seasons. It has every scuff mark that Kramer put on it with all those crazy entrances.