Paul Reiser
By shrewdly linking procreation to an act likely to make you stupid with excitement, God has seen to it that Life does indeed go on. It's possible, by the way, that this is why God's name comes up so often in the middle of the act; it's a salute to the author: Hey, whoever made this up - thanks.Collection: Stupid
New parents always sound like hucksters in a pyramid scheme. Anyone who has kids and then gets you to go and have kids gets a check from Huckster Headquarters.Collection: Kids
When you get busy, the priorities change. In your twenties, you hang out with who you were in school with. Then you grow up and you hang out with the people you're playing ball with, things you like doing with. When you get married, it changes a bit and you lose some friends, or you gain other friends. You gain couple-y friends. It changes again when you have children, and then when your children are the focus of your life.Collection: Children
In traditional TV, it's very hard to have the luxury of banking all your scripts and getting everything in a row, but it does make it very easy, and it's very productive and beneficial and you learn as you're going.Collection: Easy
You know what? The obvious is obvious for a reason.Collection: Reason
It was trying to make my tennis game look mildly respectable, which I found you don't even really need to practice if you have a really good editor. They can edit it and you're like, "Hey, it looks like I'm playing really well." That was the fun part, but it was like going to summer camp.Collection: Summer
So where did these cravings come from? I concluded it's the baby ordering in. Prenatal takeout. Even without ever being in a restaurant, fetuses develop remarkably discerning palates, and they are not shy about demanding what they want. If they get a hankering, they just pick up the umbilical cord and call. 'You know what would taste good right now? A cheeseburger, large fries, and a vanilla shake. And if you could, hurry it up, because I'm supposed to grow a lung in a half hour.'Collection: Baby
Just because a baby cries, I discovered, doesn't mean there's always something wrong. Sometimes babies wake up for no real reason. They just want to check if they're doing it right. "This is Sleeping, right?" "Exactly." "I just lie here?" "That's right." "Okay." Then back to sleep they go.Collection: Funny
My parenting style could be described as not good cop or bad cop so much as nervous cop. I'm always yelling for somebody to stop because they're about to get hurt. I'm the take a jacket, slow down guy.Collection: Hurt
The consumer mentality - we like something, what other flavor does it come in? We like that TV show, does it come in a book form? Does it come in a capsule? How about a soup?Collection: Book
The simple combination of letters and sounds you select as a name for your baby can result in a life of carefree coolness or decades of expensive therapy. Hi, I'm Jake versus Hi, I'm... TapiocaCollection: Baby
The most rewarding part about being a dad is just looking at children who didn't exist at some point. The first time you saw them, they were the size of a quarter, in a sonogram, and now they can pour orange juice and yell at each other.Collection: Children
Our date-nightrule is no talking about the kids. That lasts about to the end of the driveway.Collection: Kids
There's something very refreshing about being on stage.Collection: Stage
The most used appliance in our house is my 10-year-old son Leon's Xbox.Collection: Xbox
The most challenging part of being a dad is trying to postpone the moment when they realize you don't know anything. I love any sentence that begins with Daddy...? because it's implied they're looking up to you - that you'll have the answer. The truth is, I don't have any answers.Collection: Dad
Once in a while you get a moment of clarity - an inspiration - and they don't come that frequently.Collection: Inspiration
As you get older you realize your parents don't look so dumb - and that you're not as smart as you thought you were.Collection: Smart
A friend told me to listen to my heart. Another friend told me to listen to my gut. Maybe I need an autopsy, because right now my colon is kind of iffy.Collection: Heart
My wife and I never agree on the dishtowels. It's a matter of terms. She asks me not to put the dishtowel in the sink. So I drape it over the sink, but not in the sink. If that's our biggest problem, I think we're in good shape.Collection: Thinking
When you're in @#*!#-ing hell, your forehead can feel a wee bit feverish. (By the way, that's the way my wife actually curses. She doesn't use dirty words; she'll literally say "asterisk, pound sign, exclamation point, the-letter-'A'-with-a-circle-around-it, asterisk, asterisk, asterisk.")Collection: Funny
I remember my wife and I used to get on plane and see everybody else with their babies. They'd be putting strollers and car seats up above, and we'd think: Oh, please Lord, don't make us go through thatCollection: Baby
There are two types of people in life - those who get it and those who don't.Collection: Two
Two or three times a week, I drive by the houses of numbers 78-100 just to rub it in.Collection: Two
In fact, I had the idea because of Peter Falk. I saw my dad watching a Peter Falk movie and something clicked in my head. I gotta go make a movie for Peter Falk and meCollection: Dad
And in that time, I lost my dad and had kids of my own. It was like, OK, I get it now. I know what fatherhood is all about. And you look at your parents differentlyCollection: Dad
And after you've done the acting, there's a lot of places you can put your input - in the editing, in the production of it, in the rewriting of it and so onCollection: Editing
Every time I see Peter Falk in the movie I think that would be great. We'd be fun togetherCollection: Fun
In the history of life, no good news has followed that sentence ["We have to talk."].Collection: Dating
I can't get past the fact that food is coming out of my wife's breasts. What was once essentially an entertainment center has now become a juice bar.Collection: Past
Jerry Lewis played on the very first season of Mad About You, and he played basically himself, but he was called some other name. He said he's never done it; he'd never done a half-hour of [sitcom] television. This was 1992 or '93. And I said, "Well how is that?" And he goes, "Nobody ever asked me." It's like the pretty girl at the dance; everybody's too afraid to ask.Collection: Girl
When I'm writing for a book, it's much more reflective process. I have certain things that may not translate well to the stage, but, when they're on the page, people can really get into them. My first two books were aiming to be funnier, but the third was more about deep exploration. Things about being a parent and growing older that I thought would be perfect for a book.Collection: Book
From the minute we're born, boys and girls stare at each other, trying to figure out if they like what they see. Like parade lines, passing each other for mutual inspection. You march, you look. You march, you look. If you're interested, you stop and talk, and if it doesn't work out, you just get back in the parade. You keep marching, and you keep looking.Collection: Girl
I always loved comedy, but I never knew it was something you could learn to do. I always thought that some people are born comedians ... just like some people are born dentists.Collection: People
Nothing would make me happier if Peter Falk would finally win his Oscar for this. Not just as the writer but as a fan and a friend. It would be so greatCollection: Winning
People come up to us and ask how we knew so much about their own family... I'm talking about people from faraway places, too. I get people from Turkey and Chile coming up to me and saying I wrote about their family.Collection: Talking
Over the years, there certainly have been plenty of ideas that I've had and given up on, but for this one, the only thing that was standing in its way was me doing it - I just had to write it... And then if it didn't happen, it didn't happen. But I didn't want it to be for lack of effort on my part, so I had hunch that it would be a good story and that we would work well together. And it certainly worked out that way.Collection: Writing
We all hold on to some image of the family we want, based one way or another on the family we had. Lots of people are thrilled about the families they came from, others couldn't get away fast enough. Most people fall into that vast middle ground: great affection mixed with a few ideas for improvement. A couple of things they wish could have perhaps been done differently.Collection: Couple
I've come to realize that making it your life's work to be different than your parents is not only hard to do, it's a dumb idea. Not everything we found fault with was necessarily wrong; we were right, for example, to resent, as kids, being told when to go to bed. We'd be equally wrong, as parents, to let our kids stay up all night. To throw out all the tools of parenting just because our parents used them would be like making yourself speak English without using ten letters of the alphabet; it's hard to do.Collection: Kids
Three has always been tougher than Two. Think of any of your famous threesomes. The Three Stooges? Look at the anger there. My bet is that before Curly was born, Moe and Larry could play together for hours without even a single poke in the eye. Huey, Dewey, and Louie? Donald Duck never had a moment's peace. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly? I rest my case.Collection: Eye
I'm not smart enough to write about something that didn't actually happen to me. But I couldn't write a space movie if you put a gun to my head.Collection: Smart
You know, the fact that every morning you get a script in your mailbox, that's going to stop. All these little pedestrian, mundane things. And the cash.Collection: Morning
Younger kids, they understand that things aren't so perfect with their father or with their mother.Collection: Mother
It's not like some movies where you're following a bunch of different stories you can cut around. There was nowhere to cut to. It's these guys. We're not cutting back to anybody elseCollection: Cutting
I'd never directed before and this movie's too important to me to put in the hands of some guy who has never directed. Even if it's meCollection: Hands
But at the same time that the experience is pulling you apart, it's also bonding you. You have this joint venture! You both made this baby. And that's the thing I still can't get overCollection: Baby
They don't see that whole pattern. Worm/death. Worm/death. I would catch on.Collection: Patterns