Judd Apatow quotes:

I started a radio show where I interviewed comics.And I interviewed Leno and Seinfeld and John Candy and Father Guido Sarducci and Garry Shandling, all when I was 16.And they kind of told me what to do.

College is the reward for surviving high school. Most people have great fun stories from college and nightmare stories from high school.

I don't know if you can be a born-again virgin.

I think a lot of studios today are run by women, and we are entering a time when a lot of women have evolved in Second City and Upright Citizens Brigade and wanted to become writers and comedians.

I really think more about being honest and truthful about feelings and how people behave for the movies that I direct, but I also love movies like Zohan and Anchorman, just balls to the wall, how much can you make people laugh in one 90 minute period.

I'm always begging people like James Brooks and Cameron Crowe to come to screenings, to see what they make of it, and they're always ridiculously helpful. They also keep me brave enough to commit to what I'm trying to do. They can be great cheerleaders for risk-taking.

I'm the guy who gets uncomfortable. That's why I was able to write 'The 40-Year-Old Virgin' and 'Knocked Up.' I believe in those guys.

The ones [comedies] that I always liked, whether it's Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News, or Fast Times of Ridgemont High, they were all about two hours, or a little bit over two hours. With that extra 15 or 20 minutes, you can get to real character and you're not just stuck in plot.

There's something honorable about holding out for love and not breaking up for the sake of the baby. I see people get divorced, and there is a part of me that thinks, I wonder how hard they tried?

My dad was a big fan of comedy. He wanted to be a stand-up. He loved Lenny [Bruce]. He also loved Lord Buckley and jazz and stuff. He was a hipster. My parents were kind of beatnik-y, you know, for Salt Lake City. But my humor, I think, came from wanting to disarm people before they hit me.

My grandfather was Bob Shad, one of those legendary jazz and blues producers - he worked with Charlie Parker and Dinah Washington, and he produced Janis Joplin's album [1967's Big Brother & the Holding Company]. He always owned small labels as well - he had a label called Mainstream Records in the 70s.

Don't be a jerk. Try to love everyone. Give more than you take. And do it despite the fact that you only really like about seven out of 500 people.

The moment you think of a joke is the best moment.

Television is much more difficult because at every moment the network can force you to change things based on their belief about what would make it popular. You're in a constant debate with a gun at your head, and the gun is cancellation. So it's hard to win the arguments.

Well, every movie is an experiment. And the only way you can grow at what you're doing is to take chances. You can't try to stick with what worked last time.

I used to scream at everybody at the beginning of my career. I'd get really emotional. I'd project all my issues about my parents and safety onto the executives, so every conversation where they gave a note was life or death and you don't love me.

I'm making a movie about relationships, and I'm surrounded by guys scared of talking to girls.

I have a four-and-a-half-year-old and, when she was two and a half, she would make my wife and I do voices, like Woody and Jessie the Cowgirl, or Elmo, or Yogi Bear and Booboo. If we didn't do it, she would scream at us. So, my wife and I would have adult conversations as Yogi Bear and Booboo. It was just a nightmare year.

A lot of the turning points happen in high school and in college, and it defines a lot of how you see the world and how you decide to defend yourself from the world. Some people - their defense mechanism is, I'm really smart or I'm sexy or I'm the leader. And other people - they hide or they make jokes.

I was a big TV kid.When I was a kid, I would go home at 3:00 and watch TV straight through to the end of Letterman at 1:30 in the morning.I was obsessed with comics.And I would watch Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno and study them as if it was Tolstoy.

The first comedians I became fascinated with were the Marx brothers. I couldn't get enough of them. Later in life, I thought, "Well, maybe it's because they were so rebellious and they were just flipping the bird to society and all the rules we're supposed to follow." They were saying that none of it is fair.

Sometimes you need to get away for a few weeks just to figure out who you are again.

Up until 'Bridesmaids,' the general consensus was that women preferred comedy a bit softer.

The only thing worse than a crappy TV show which Paddy Chayevsky couldn't have conceived in his worst nightmare is two megacorps fighting over who thought of the crappy show first.

I've always appreciated people like Graham Parker or Loudon Wainwright III, who spend their entire lives writing songs and working their asses off just to have complete artistic freedom. They're just sharing their lives with you through their music. That's the same kind of work that I'm trying to do, in my own weird way.

I always thought that Seth [Rogen] was a fun, caustic, bombastic, sweet, underdog-type of person that I would root for the way you used to root for Bill Murray or John Candy in "Stripes." Seth had something that very few people you encounter have: he had a writer's mind and he had his own comic point of view.

All of my jokes were about not being able to meet anybody. I didn't have any insight into anything - even my own insecurities.

If you look at who drives the box office numbers at these films, it's men.

My way of dealing with the world has always been to make fun of it and observe it but not take part in it.That's how I became a writer. But when you have kids, suddenly you have to be part of things. It leads almost to a breakdown because your whole defense mechanism is now really destructive.

I always felt as a kid that I was underappreciated, invisible or weird, but I've always secretly thought people would one day appreciate what is different about me. I'm always putting that message out there.

A lot of times, it's easy to trim the movie 'cause you just start losing things that you thought would be there just for amusement's sake that actually are not funny. My favorite part of the process is seeing it with an audience. I do about eight previews to see how things are working.

I need to find people who I respect so I can respect them, and they'll like being respected so they'll respect me, and that's like a marriage.

There was definitely a period when I just felt out of sync with earth.

I think that everything I do tends to root for the underdog.

I've had movies bomb with terrible reviews, I've had movies make a lot of money with terrible reviews, I've had movies get good reviews and make money. And I like it best when the movies do well and the reviewers like them.

I love Coldplay. I love Steely Dan - Steely Dan's probably one of my top three bands of all time.

There's nothing more fun than debating and defending your taste in music.

I get the most starstruck around musicians. I get tongue-tied and don't know what to say. I'm so jealous of them. When you make a movie, you're constructing something - it's a little bit like making an album. But after musicians make an album, they get to perform it live and experience it in front of a crowd.

Back in the old days, everyone was shocked if a band had a sponsor for their tour. Now, Bob Dylan can do a commercial for Victoria's Secret and people don't really blink; the Beatles' songs are in all sorts of commercials these days and it doesn't seem to offend anybody. The times are changing.

I start casting early in the writing process, so I can tailor the script to the gifts of the actors.

I think a lot of Hollywood is in retreat right now trying to figure out how to make money and make the safest bets.

Eventually, the nerds and the geeks will have their day.

Up until 'Bridesmaids', the general consensus was that women preferred comedy a bit softer.

I wanted to see how funny I could be without making the choice that every 10 minutes something big and visual had to happen.

For me, until I know that the audience really gets what I'm trying to communicate I'm not done.

It's so difficult to shock America these days.

People talk about universal intelligence ... I'm reticent to believe almost anything, just because my parents weren't religious at all, but that's when I feel it. People talk about being in the "flow."

I am always driven by the terror of humiliation.

Most people are really fighting to not be adults. And, when it happens, it's a big transition. And a lot of that is just awful. It's awful to have to get a job and really be responsible for other people. And it is funny, too. Like, we're all kind of little idiot kids trying to act like we know what we are doing.

I put on a big show when I write something I think is funny.

Every day I live by only one rule, be a good guy.

I'm always surprised when you do something very different that people don't get behind you more, because you're always told, "Take chances! Stretch!" And when you do it, sometimes people get really supportive and excited, but sometimes people go at you because you've tossed out the formula.

I think the story should always determine the visual approach. There are situations where you want things to feel alive and like life, and there are situations that should have some magic and the separation with the grain.

The only way you survive on all these services is if you're groundbreaking. There's pressure to be groundbreaking, which is the greatest thing that's ever happened. It's a bizarre aspect of what's happened with all of these subscription services is everyone is trying to outdo each other by doing great things.

I always see other people as predecessors and admire them.

I still feel like a nerd.

I was a guest on Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee with Jerry Seinfeld, and I interviewed him when I was 15 years old-those moments really blow your mind.

I love magazines and film critics, so I eat it up. I'm not one of those people who says 'I never read anything.' I generally read all of it.

I feel like everybody's waiting for a job y'know, you can make a movie on your phone. And so there really is no reason to worry about how to get in with people- and you can do that, there's a lot to learn working for people -but you can just make a movie, where in the old days that was completely impossible.

People like the comedy more when they care about the characters.

Penn [Jillette] and Teller and I get along very well. We can call each other and say, "I'm working on this classic effect. Please, I'd like to do it for a while." We'll all respect it. There are people we don't get along with, but mostly there is a respect amongst the group.

The great thing about Eminem is, he's just hysterical. You forget, people like Eminem because he is riotously funny. And he's a great actor.

It seems like magic is something kids start really young.

Most comedians weren't great athletes; that was the way they got noticed in high school.

There are only so many hilarious actors so when they cross-pollinate, people assume it's always the same actors and directors.

If we really talked about what's wrong with you, you'd need a 7-1/2-hour movie and nobody would know what category to put it in!

I used to bug all of the comedians for interviews, and when people want to talk to me, sometimes I'm very receptive and sometimes I say no. Sometimes if I say no, I think, "If they're smart, they'll figure out how to not accept this no."

To me, I've never understood why there is any question about are women as funny as men.

With comedy, a lot of people develop their sense of humor as a defense mechanism.

I was listening to Tommy Chong talking about how he feels like there is like a creative flow happening and how certain people just know how to hook into the pipe. He played music with Jimi Hendrix and felt that he was personally connected to some higher intelligence or creativity.

I always thought it was important to overdeliver, and when I got one of my first jobs, writing jokes for Garry Shandling when he was hosting the Grammys, I stayed up all night and wrote a hundred jokes, and I thought, "I'm always going to be the person that gives them more than they requested, and that's why they'll want to keep me around."

Every joke is an experiment. When you sit, alone, and write a script, or just a joke, you really have no idea if it will succeed.

You can work on a movie for years, and you won't know until you show it to an audience for the first time if it makes any sense to them at all, if they're touched, if they find it funny, so it's endlessly exciting, because failure is just right there all the time, and your chances of success don't rise that much based on the fact that you succeeded last time.

Nobody's going to like my next movie because they liked Trainwreck [2015]. It has to work on its own, and that keeps it really scary.

In the writing, I'm just trying to go deeper, emotionally, and learn more about myself and reveal more and find a way to connect with people in new ways.

I always feel like I'm very far from my potential.

If you're an athlete, you might work your entire life, and you win the Super Bowl once, if you're lucky. And I feel like in the arts and entertainment we win the Super Bowl all the time.

In my beginnings, those nos were ever-present-even today, those nos are ever-present-and it's the workaround. I always found a workaround for people who turned their back to me. It's a way of being persistent that makes them take notice.

I'm trying to think if there was ever the Lenny Bruce-y, observational, George Carlin kind of magician: "You know what I hate is ..." I don't think that ever existed.

That's very important to me as well: presentation and how people perceive you, the visual of how things look, your posture. I learned that from [Bob] Fosse and Jerome Robbins, from all the great theater directors and the Busby Berkeleys. You overdeliver: visually, emotionally.

It's so funny, all the similarities that we have [with David Copperfield] of being obsessed young people and finding a way to be around the people doing what we want to do.

Any music star would be singing about his lost love. A movie would be about a relatable incident; it wasn't an untouchable magic dragon box. It was something that people could relate to, and when I vanished a girl, it would be a story about a girl that left me, or a cutting into pieces would be a date with a magician. I wouldn't just vanish a girl in a shower, I would do the shower scene from Psycho [1960] with a [Alfred] Hitchcock cameo.

In my work, there is a lot of storytelling. The storytelling is not a new thing. Back in the [Howard] Thurston days, the [Harry] Houdini days, the [Harry] Blackstone days, it was stories, but the stories were, "We're going to the Egyptian temples, and we're going to vanish the Prince of Thebes," and, "On my last trip to the Orient ..."

I don't think there's really observational magic.

So many people are in comedy because of difficult mothers or broken homes.

Sometimes a story idea will come to me, and suddenly I've figured out the whole thing, and I feel like I'm collaborating with something other than myself.

Literally, my last call was with David Blaine, congratulating him on his show. I have a camaraderie with David.

You hear people say: "One day, when I'm in a good position I can make my passion project." I've seen a lot of people get into that position and not make it.

When I was very young, I started to make friends with much, much older people. So when I was twenty, my friends were fifty, and I never really went through forty because I would watch them die and I would feel younger. So you make friends with older people and you will always feel young no matter what.

Every time I perform in front of people, no matter how well it goes, the next day, I feel humiliated.

I wrote on the Grammys, and a few times for Garry Shandling when he was hosting. I couldn't have enjoyed those gigs more, because I would get to collaborate and try to make people I looked up to laugh, but for the most part, when you're as talented as they are, what they really want is someone who can type fast and whose presence makes them feel in the mood to write and spew and be creative, and I was a good person to have in the room.

I hosted the Producer's Guild Awards, and it went well, and I was very happy in the moment, and it was a fun night. But I wake up the next day like someone who did crack the night before and told off the world, and I'm ashamed of the whole idea that anyone should listen to me, or the idea that I need that much approval.

For a long time, TV was just the land of handsome, beautiful people, and now it's the opposite.

It's a fun idea, to follow a couple very slowly and show every nook and cranny of their relationship.

If you work on network TV, they want to pick your casts, dictate your story and how your show works. It just becomes creativity by committee, which is never good.

You can do weird things on TV - there are happy stories, sad stories, dark stories. But with a movie, it always has to end satisfying. Unless you're the Coen brothers, and it ends with somebody getting shot in the head.

I feel like it's a golden age for television.

It's what I always dreamed of: that you can make TV and everyone would get out of your way and you follow your vision without watering it down.

The little details really connect for people in ways I never realized before.I think that's why some of the movies have done well, because people are relating to things that I'm willing to expose.

I've come to realize that people connect more when they know you're telling them the truth or some aspect of your story, some mutated version of how you are experiencing this life.

Some people are probably saner. They're good performers, and they go about their day. I just get obsessive about it.

I love when people work together who know each other very well. Some of my favourite movies are people who are close friends or families.

I have to go back to vinyl every once in awhile, even if my kids don't want to hear it. I'm much more likely to be listening to Wilco or the Avett Brothers.

I remember before I did my HBO special, Chris [Rock] screamed at me - in a loving way, but still. He was like, "You need to do 200 shows in a row and a month straight on the road before you even think about recording a special!" And I had literally booked two weeks on the road and then went right into the recording. It put me in a panic, but it also made me work harder and made me realize that everyone works differently, and that's okay.

I definitely learned to embrace the quiet moments onstage from Garry Shandling - relaxing and not fighting with the crowd, not raising your voice, not ever trying to win them over.

It's funny, now there are so many bands that I can never remember any of their names. Maybe it's because I'm old.

Nowadays, when kids decide they like an artist, they'll absorb everything that artist has ever done in a single night.

I try to just save a fresh, clear head for whoever I'm working with, so hopefully it's helpful that there's someone who doesn't have to sit in the editing room for 12 hours a day, and who's blinded by the massive footage and options that they have.

I don't really get attached to anything. I'm pretty brutal about cutting stuff. With each successful movie, I've discovered anything that's not connected to the immediate story is going to be cut out of it.

Deer are like dogs. Except for Bambi, they're pretty personality-less.

I don't think there's that many great 90-minute comedies.

The hard part about getting much attention is that people start dissecting what you do.

I feel the responsibility to make things which on some level have something positive to say.

Every time I'm in editing, there's always a moment where you think, "Maybe this should be six or seven minutes shorter, but I'm losing character and story that I think is important." When I like things, I'm not in a rush for them to end.

There are people who like short movies, and I think they should just watch our movies on DVD because they can pause, go to the bathroom, eat dinner, and come back to it.

In terms of the emotional underpinning, if you've been in relationships, you understand what's happening.

I don't want to be ordinary. I'm willing to do the work. I'm willing to suffer the indignities of comedy because I want to be great. I don't want to just be good. I want to be great.

Maybe you just get so attached to the music of your youth that you think it's better than what's coming out now.

There are people that entertainment is something they do at the end of a long hard day at work, and they want to be entertained and have it over quickly. They're like, "Entertain me fast!"

It's funny when people debate about music, because they get so passionate about what they enjoy.