Harry Shearer Quotes

Most shows get dumped by the networks, do a couple of years in syndication, then they're in the vault. 'Mission: Impossible' has never been off the screen.

They [ The Simpsons] are just like the Bible to me as far as what the high-water mark of comedy.

I just grew up with it [The Simpsons]. The first season came on when I was 5, 6 years old, and the show evolved as I was growing up and got funnier and funnier and, by the time I was in 12th grade, they were at their funniest.

Yeah, I'd done a bunch of pilots. Some that had gone for a while. One that went for 13 episodes. But I had never been on a show that had lasted more than that.

'Hogan's Heroes' lasted longer than the war.

We'll never see national shows with 45 shares again.

When it moved to Friday night it disappeared, when they find another show that can do what The Simpsons does, they will be delighted to do cancel The Simpsons.

'Married with Children,' we were good until the fifth or sixth season, and then we limped into the 11th season.

'Fresh Off the Boat' will be syndicated. This show and these characters will live forever in the pantheon of classic family sitcoms.

The fact that a wrestling program called 'Raw' could be the longest running television show in the history of television, bar nobody - nobody can now say we're not on the map.

The Simpsons is the best thing on American television.

I have to say that The Simpsons comes from a huge number of great writers headed by Al Jean, the show-runner, and the work that they do is really fantastic. It's a blast just to sit around with them in the writers' room and listen to all the filthy jokes that will never get on the air.

I think part of it is the fact that they were kind of the first of its kind - there weren't a lot of cartoons for adults. People forget at the time that The Simpsons started out, it was controversial - the fact that they said "hell" and "damn" in a cartoon was a lot. America was in an uproar.

It was the 60th anniversary of 'Face the Nation.' During his interview, President Obama said, 'Our country doesn't fear the future. We grab it.' Nothing says you grab the future like going on a 60-year-old show hosted by a 77-year-old-man to speak to a 90-year-old audience.

One of the tricks that you have to learn, with episodic TV, is you don't know how many years you're going to be blessed with.

I've never been on a show that's run for more than a season.

In a sense, 'Twin Peaks' never really went away. They've got a 'Twin Peaks' convention up in Washington every year, and I'm pretty much recognized on a fairly regular basis from 'Twin Peaks,' so I feel like it never really got too far away.

'The Cosby Show' made an impact on comedy, television and culture. We rejected lowering the bar.

One way in which 'Friends' did resemble 'Seinfeld' is that it really found its audience over the summer of 1995 in reruns. That's when the main title song, 'I'll Be There for You', by the Rembrandts, exploded, too.

Technically, 'Kukla, Fran and Ollie' was a kids' show, but adults watched almost religiously - and we're talking adult adults, celebrated adults - including James Thurber, Orson Welles, John Steinbeck, Adlai E. Stevenson and lyricist Stephen Sondheim.

To me, in retrospect, it was amazing that 'Seinfeld' was a show that had such mass appeal. At first it was a disaster in the ratings, but then it became a cultural phenomenon. I don't know if that's possible anymore, but I don't try for that.

'Lost' was a phenomenon, like Elvis.

The longest show I've ever done was four and a half years, so I can only imagine what ending an eight year show is like.

When The Simpsons came around, there really was nothing else like it on TV. It's hard to imagine, but when Fox first took the plunge with it, it was considered controversial to put animation on prime time.

NBC gives comedies a chance to find their legs.