Andy Richter Quotes

The word 'success' - who's defining it? It's about whether or not it makes me feel good. Four billion people don't have to see or hear it. If I've enjoyed the process of creation and I'm at peace, then what happens next is just entertainment. If mass appeal were actually something, Marilyn Monroe wouldn't be dead.

You can get totally messed up trying to please everyone with what you do, but ultimately, you have to please yourself.

I have had quite a lot of prizes, but I don't think it makes any difference to the ease or difficulty to the writing process.

I don't write for a particular audience. I work as an artist, and I think the audience of one, which is the self, and I have to satisfy myself as an artist. So I always say that I write for the same people that Picasso painted for. I think he painted for himself.

I spent a lot of my 20s just trying to make other people happy, rather than trying to figure out if doing that made me happy.

When you write, you're inside the project. You can't really think about the reception. It has to be worth it even if no one reads it.

You cannot please everyone, and I think that what's important, ultimately, is to make sure you please yourself. If you start trying to please other people, you'll just go around in circles.

Of course it's nice to get recognition, but I'm not looking for it. I just do my thing. If it comes, it comes. But it's not what you play for.

Personally, I experience success when I enjoy what I'm doing. I love the creative process, even if the end result isn't embraced by anyone else.

Your only hope of satisfying others is in satisfying yourself. I speak of a great satisfaction, not a commercial satisfaction.

You'll never write anything that really satisfies you though it may satisfy other people.

I think you have to satisfy yourself first and foremost.

The first person you should think of pleasing, in writing a book, is yourself. If you can amuse yourself for the length of time it takes to write a book, the publisher and the readers can and will come later.

Doing something purely for one's own enjoyment is fine, but, I must admit, finding that others enjoy it as well has a certain power over the corners of my mouth.

A picture should be a re-creation of an event rather than an illustration of an object; but there is no tension in the picture unless there is a struggle with the object.

When I'm writing, I really want to satisfy myself. I've got a story that I am working on and struggling with, and I want to tell it the most effective way I can. That's really what I struggle with. And the thought of who may be reading it may be there somewhere in the back of my mind - I'll never say it's not there because I don't know - but it's not really what I'm thinking about.

I stand by the Lost finale. It's the story that we wanted to tell, and we told it. No excuses. No apologies. I look back on it as fondly as I look back on the process of writing the whole show. And while I'll always care what you think, I can't be a slave to it anymore. Here's why: I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really … I was alive.

I don't know that I ever wanted greatness, on its own. It seems rather like wanting to be an engineer, rather than wanting to design something--or wanting to be a writer, rather than wanting to write. It should be a by-product, not a thing in itself. Otherwise, it's just an ego trip.

You do the work and you want people to see it; but, um while I'm doing the work, the result doesn't matter at all to me. Ultimately, I don't, I don't care whether the film is - you know - some big giant box-office bonanza and I don't care if its a complete flop. To me, when a film gets made and it's actually finished it's a success. They're all a success in their own way.

I do not suppose that anyone not a poet can realize the agony of creating a poem. Every nerve, even every muscle, seems strained to the breaking point. The poem will not be denied; to refuse to write it would be a greater torture. It tears its way out of the brain, splintering and breaking its passage, and leaves that organ in the state of a jelly-fish when the task is done.

If you don't like what you're doing, it's unlikely anyone else will either, so be sure you are happy with your own work first.

I can't please everybody and I don't try to. If I can please myself that's enough. For the rest, I just hope for the best.

A lot of people that I know are bugged with the idea that they have got to have an audience, or they have got to be liked. I think the more that you fall into that trap it makes your own life harder to come to terms with, because an audience appreciation is only going to be periodic at the best of times.

The last thing that we find in making a book is to know what we must put first.

I'm not very comfortable with watching my performances. I don't particularly find a great joy in it. Everything is the process of making it, of getting it, getting the job, saying yes to the job. Those are the joys. Making it is the greatest joy. And then, you have to show the bloody thing. You have to show and tell, be judged. But I don't listen. I don't pay much attention. I hear the rumblings of greatness or the arrows of discontent and harsh words. Then you go, "Oh God. Why?"