Garry Marshall Quotes

You know this old style of American family series? Well, I sit there and cry.

I've chosen all my films very carefully. I know that I've had better parts in some films than in others. But the films I do are the ones I want to see when I read the screenplays. I guess you can basically say that I've just done things I loved when I read them.

I have passed on on a lot of roles. I purely and simply do what I like.

I've got two very sophisticated daughters who'd rather die than see their dad in a technicoloured knitted jacket.

My grandma loves beauty pageants, like most of Latin American culture, but it's not for me.

The thing that attracts people to "The Sopranos" is the family element. It shows that America still has a longing for that traditional upbringing.

There's just a deeper level of sophistication in the writing of female characters on TV.

Honestly, I don't try to guess at what most people want. I don't think I'd guess right, and I just think that that's not a good recipe for storytelling. I try to write what I like, what I think my friends would like.

The songs that I'm able to write are the songs I'm able to write, whatever they may be. The path I've cut for myself is pop music - love-y pop music. That's what I enjoy doing. And I don't think I'm going to get sick of it anytime soon.

My father wanted to be an actor, dreamed about being an actor, but he gave it up because my mom and his family told him, "You're never going to make it; it's too tough out there."

Me, Polly Garter, under the washing line, giving the breast in the garden to my bonny new baby. Nothing grows in our garden, only washing. And babies. And where's their fathers live, my love? Over the hills and far away. You're looking up at me now. I know what you're thinking, you poor little milky creature. You're thinking, you're no better than you should be, Polly, and that's good enough for me. Oh, isn't life a terrible thing, thank God?

My father knows more about sports than any human being out there. He relaxes. The ribbing that we give each at the Christmas holidays is incredible. He's much more of an ordinary American and a proper American than a lot people would probably ever believe.

My brother and I were both teenage writers, and he was, I have to say, better than I was, but he went into science, and I went into writing.

I have not watched the TV show. I do not generally watch TV sci-fi drama shows. They make me itch.

The writing is so great on TV now; it's such a pleasure to watch.

That is not a crack house. It is a house with a family with a father and a mother and three sons and a daughter.

Read widely, and without apology. Read what you want to read, not what someone tells you you should read.

I love Modern Family but it's among a handful of favorite shows.

Writing pilots is such a specific thing. It's not even really writing TV shows. A pilot is its own beast.

The Americans are violently oral. That's why in America the mother is all-important and the father has no position at all -- isn't respected in the least. Even the American passion for laxatives can be explained as an oral manifestation. They want to get rid of any unpleasantness taken in through the mouth.

When you recognize good writing and you're lucky enough to get it, like with Lost, that's what I follow.

America needs to be a lot more like the Waltons and a lot less like The Simpsons.

New rules. If you are smart enough to live, you won’t hit Charles’s mate in front of his father.

It's far easier to write why something is terrible than why it's good. If you're reviewing a film and you decide "This is a movie I don't like," basically you can take every element of the film and find the obvious flaw, or argue that it seems ridiculous, or like a parody of itself, or that it's not as good as something similar that was done in a previous film. What's hard to do is describe why you like something. Because ultimately, the reason things move people is very amorphous. You can be cerebral about things you hate, but most of the things you like tend to be very emotive.

I've been approached many times by many different people, and most people want to do something that I write and produce, and I'm just not into that.