Harold Ramis Quotes

Nothing reinforces a professional relationship more than enjoying success with someone.

I had a lot of fun working with John Candy. We had a pretty good rapport.

No matter what I have to say, I'm still trying to say it in comedic form.

My characters aren't losers. They're rebels. They win by their refusal to play by everyone else's rules.

Acting is all about big hair and funny props... All the great actors knew it. Olivier knew it, Brando knew it.

If Chevy Chase had not been an actor, he might have been a very popular guy in advertising or whatever field he would have gone into, because of his charisma.

I collect spores, molds, and fungus.

I always claim that the writer has done 90 percent of the director's work.

I was the little guy who knew how to tie a necktie. It came from having absentee parents. They were tremendously loving and caring people who, by circumstance, had to go to work.

Never hit anyone in anger, unless you're absolutely sure you can get away with it.

Find the most talented person in the room and if it's not you, go stand next to him. Hang out with him. try to be helpful.

Billy Crystal knows how to make people laugh. He's got 30 years on stage... there's no telling him what's funny.

You don't have to know much, just a little bit more than everybody else.

I believe things happen that can't be explained, but so many people seem intent on explaining them. Everyone has an answer for them. Either aliens or things from the spirit world.

I never work just to work. It's some combination of laziness and self-respect.

I'd like to think I'd never do a gratuitous fart joke.

Comedy is essentially made by young men, or older men with some form of arrested development, for young men or immature older men.

How one handles success or failure is determined by their early childhood.

You can't not have feelings about country clubs, whichever side you're on.

The cutting room is where you discover the optimal length of the movie.

That's one of the great things about DVD: In addition to reaching people who didn't catch the movie in theaters, you get to have this interaction of sorts.

We are all several different people. There are different aspects of our nature that are competing.

Life doesn't care about your vision. You just gotta roll with it.

Just expressing contempt for your leaders doesn't really accomplish anything.

I'd rather do comedies that strike at some bigger ideas.

There's a personal story of my own that I will write at some point, and it's a film that I will happily make. It could very well be the next thing I do, unless someone shows me something great.

I've been directing for 25 years almost, and I've only directed nine films in that time because I like to be careful.

Multiplicity was a movie that tested really well. People seeing the movie really liked it, but then the studio couldn't market it. We opened on a weekend with nine other films.

The first comedy screenplay that I wrote was Animal House and I always thought I could and should be a director but no one was about to give me that opportunity on Animal House.

I used to be married to a woman who pursued every spiritual trend with tremendous passion and dragged me along. I don't believe in anything. I'd seen mediums and readers.

I'm not a believer in the pratfall. I don't think it's funny just to have someone fall down.

I feel a big obligation to the audience, almost in a moral sense, to say something useful. If I'm going to spend a year of my life on these things, I want something that I feel that strongly about.

My job is to come up with something that you like and you agree with that you would play wholeheartedly. If we disagree, I may not be doing my job correctly.

I'm terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought.

Parents tell us things to protect us, or they educate us from their own misinformation or misconceptions.

As much as I liked acting for its playfulness and the reward of hearing big laughs wash over you on a stage, I always felt I should do something that I could control.

I realized that my righteous indignation was a form of entertainment for me. I loved getting pissed off at injustice. I didn't do anything about it, I just liked the feeling of being pissed off.

I have no trouble selling out—I’m a benevolent hack, in a certain way—but I want to pander for something I believe in.

Whatever bliss we think we're going to find, we may find it in brief flashes, fleeting moments that come and go. There's an impossibility to nailing down any good feeling.

No one will laugh at how great things are for somebody.

The comic impulse is sometimes a reaction to sadness. You feel like you can make one choice or the other.

Once you're alienated, you're on your own. That takes you to the world of the existential, where things just kind of float.

The trick with sequels is, you have to give people what they liked before, yet be innovative enough so they don't feel like they're seeing the same movie.

Where's the great pay? Where's the travel? Where's the Winnebago, Goddamnit!

I try to measure the amount of truth in a work rather than just looking at the generic distinction between comedy and drama.

I'm sure that the liability for doing a tracheotomy would be tremendous. You make one mistake, and it's over. Most doctors won't even do it.

Some people have a fear of rejecting all the security that comes with family, church and state. They become fundamentalists.

I want to explore marriage without the usual Hallmark Card platitudes. Life is difficult, and I like movies that acknowledge that.

I loved writing and performing, but the idea of doing it for a living seemed so remote. But I eventually let it devolve to the point where it was the only thing I could do.

I have tons of rescuing fantasies based on the movies I saw when I was growing up. I wanted to be Robin Hood and the Three Musketeers and the Scarlet Pimpernel.