Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" I like Mr. Burns because he is pure evil. A lot of evil people make the mistake of diluting it. Never adulterate your evil. "
Harry Shearer
Pure
Never
People
Related Quotes:
" That was Embassy Pictures, they went bankrupt shortly after This is Spinal Tap came out. "
Harry Shearer
After
Tap
Spinal
" My family was lower middle class, and my parents both worked, so we couldn't take proper vacations. We'd go for three days to Santa Barbara or to the desert, so my first real vacation came was when I was 12, when friends of my parents were taking their kids away. We went to Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, and Zion National Park in Arizona and Utah. "
Harry Shearer
Vacation
Parents
Three
" I think I've ascended to the point after a lot of years where I'm kind of OK on bass. "
Harry Shearer
Bass
Years
Where
" That's life's big joke: we all end up looking like Mr. Burns. "
Harry Shearer
Big
Looking
Like
" If absolute power corrupts absolutely, does absolute powerlessness make you pure? "
Harry Shearer
Pure
You
Make
" One of the problems with 'SNL' is that, if you tried to adlib, the director would put you off camera and off the mic, so only you would know that you ever did it. The director always directed to the script; he wasn't listening to what you were doing. He was calling shots whilst looking at the page. "
Harry Shearer
Problems
Looking
Camera
" I believe London is the city New York wants to be when it grows up. I love the wealth of cultural resources that a city of that size can offer. I also believe I don't have to sacrifice all of my standards for human behavior to avail myself of them. "
Harry Shearer
City
Love
Myself
" We're very pleased to be on a show which is known and loved around the world. "
Harry Shearer
Known
Loved
Show
" My parents didn't want me to be a regular in a series. I was a working actor from time to time but they thought was a little too much being a star of a series. They wanted me to have a slightly more normal childhood. "
Harry Shearer
Childhood
Parents
Time
" I never wanted to do a regular sitcom, because I'd be incredibly bored doing the same character week in, week out. But the beauty of 'The Simpsons' is that it's 15, 16, 17 characters. It's the variety that keeps it interesting. And hey, they're all my children. "
Harry Shearer
Children
Character
Beauty
" 'Spinal Tap' began as a mock rock band that we four - Rob Reiner, Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and myself - developed for an appearance on a TV pilot at the end of the 1970s. On our own initiative, we wrote and recorded most of the songs and performed them live in several music clubs around L.A. before any cameras rolled. "
Harry Shearer
Band
Music
Myself
" People don't play music in New Orleans for the reasons they do in Nashville or L.A. - to become stars or to get rich - they play because they've got to. It's in the streets, in their family, in their blood. "
Harry Shearer
Stars
People
Music
" Well I directed a few feature length things for HBO in the late eighties. "
Harry Shearer
Well
Eighties
Late
" 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. "
Harry Shearer
Friday
Friday Night
Will
" Bryce Canyon isn't as famous as the Grand Canyon, but it is just incredible - nothing compares to it. "
Harry Shearer
Canyon
Grand Canyon
Famous
" In the year and a half I was on SNL, I never saw anybody ad lib anything. For a very good reason - the director cut according to the script. So, if you ad libbed, you'd be off mike and off camera. "
Harry Shearer
Good
Camera
Director
" I'm lucky that I can walk down the street, and maybe one person will recognise me from 'The Simpsons,' and another person will recognise me from 'Spinal Tap,' and it's always surprising. "
Harry Shearer
Me
Walk
Street
" I'll always watch anything that Steve Coogan does in the character of Alan Partridge. "
Harry Shearer
Watch
Anything
Does
" You have to do real acting, not just do a voice. "
Harry Shearer
You
Acting
Just
" My job is to take what I think is funny and to make other people think it's funny, too. "
Harry Shearer
Think
Job
Funny
" To me, the funniest American of the Twentieth Century is Richard Nixon because he had the most to hide, and he was so bad at hiding it. To me, that's what's really funny - people who think they're doing a great job of hiding stuff, and it just keeps leaking out. "
Harry Shearer
Me
Funny
Great
" The right-wingness of Fox is basically the news channel. I don't think the broadcast network has any politics at all. It's sub-political at best. "
Harry Shearer
Fox
Think
Any
" Most Americans never work as hard as when they're trying to appear normal, and in New Orleans, we just don't bother with that. "
Harry Shearer
Work
Trying
Normal
" I love to see what real human behavior looks like. I've always envisioned my job as just observing and noting that and, for the purposes of my work, just cutting out the boring parts. "
Harry Shearer
See
Job
Work
" The last president we had was the smartest guy anyone could remember and he did the dumbest thing anyone has ever seen in the White House so go figure. "
Harry Shearer
House
Guy
Last
" I always thought, as a kid, if you - and the reason that I sort of stayed away from doing one character on a sitcom is - if you're doing one thing all the time, the audience is going to come up to you and say the one thing all the time. "
Harry Shearer
Character
Doing
Thought
" Behind the ambitious, creative talent that is Hollywood lies a darker side of the entertainment industry little appreciated by the ordinary moviegoer. It's an opaque world of film financing, revenue accretion, and minimal profit share. "
Harry Shearer
World
Creative
Talent
" You know, radio was a really easy way to do the shows. You'd come in, do a read-through, there'd be a few rehearsals, then you'd come the night of the show and do it in front of the audience and then go home. "
Harry Shearer
You
Easy
Home
" Well Washington DC what are you going to do. They think the capitol steps are the state of the art in comedy. You try to drag them into the 20th century let alone the 21st and they refuse to come with you. "
Harry Shearer
Try
Alone
Art
" When I did that first movie, it was the introduction to all the set-up time and the waiting time that's endemic in motion pictures, and the repetition. "
Harry Shearer
Time
Did
Pictures