Larry David Quotes

You know who wears sunglasses inside? Blind people and assholes.

Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it'd find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it." [Q&A with Larry McCaffery, Review of Contemporary Fiction, Summer 1993, Vol. 13.2]

Pretty good. Pretttttttty, pretttttttttty, pretttttty good.

You can't do anything in life. The social barriers in life are so intense and horrific that every encounter is just fraught with so many problems and dread. Every social situation is a potential nightmare.

A good compromise is when both parties are dissatisfied

I'd rather have the thieves than the neighbors - the thieves don't impose. Thieves just want your things, neighbors want your time. I'd rather give them things than time.

If Larry David were living in 18th century France and heard the peasants had no bread, his response "Let them eat cake" would have made people laugh. But when Marie Antoinette said it, they chopped off her head.

When I was living in New York and didn't have a penny to my name, I would walk around the streets and occasionally I would see an alcove or something. And I'd think, that'll be good, that'll be a good spot for me when I'm homeless.

An employee is told that the customer is always right and, in fact, the customer is usually a moron and as asshole

When I’m in social situations I always hold onto my glass. It makes me feel comfortable and secure, and I don’t have to shake hands

It’s got something to do with love. With having the discipline to talk out of the part of yourself that can love instead of the part that just wants to be loved.

Trying on pants is one of the most humiliating things a man can suffer that doesn't involve a woman.

Larry: i don’t really get this fascination that people have with the ocean Cheryl: no? Larry: i dunno. i mean i stare at it for ten minutes and i go okay i get it Cheryl: don’t you feel calmer? Larry: i feel aggravated that i am missing what other people are getting.

A date is an experience you have with another person that makes you appreciate being alone.

Nobel physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who proclaimed, “There is only one mind,” and the distinguished physicist David Bohm, who asserted, “Deep down the consciousness of mankind is one.

She was breaking the rules! She wasn't following the rules of society ... The unwritten rules that we have as we go about our day. Like at night, you tiptoe, that's an unwritten rule, you tiptoe, so you don't wake people up, there's no sign 'TIPTOE', you just have to be smart enough and considerate enough to do it.

The temperature in that hangar would sometimes get down to 40 degrees, and very often I had to put on long underwear, which was so restrictive I suffered from an acute vascular disorder for days afterward.

Shouldn't be having a birthday party two weeks after your birthday ... Okay, three days, no more than that though, it's not your birthday anymore! There’s gotta be a time, there’s gotta be a cutoff point where you can’t have birthday parties. You’re so desperate for a party that you have to have a party two weeks after? Wait till next year, you missed it!

The one thing about Hitler that I admire is that he wouldn't take any shit from magicians.

They would work for something like fifty-six days in a row without a break. That was what it took to replace Larry David.

They privatize the profits and socialize the losses, so whichever way the wheel spins, they win." Quote from a millionaire Wall-Streeter in Hitchhiking with Larry David by Paul Samule Dolman.

As a teen, I was an angst on wheels, and as an adult, I'm essentially a young, half-Greek Larry David in heels-incapable of hiding discomfort, dissatisfaction, or doubt, inescapably myself and often honest to a fault.

Just because a book is a classic doesn't mean it has anything to do with real life. Homer's ILIAD is taught at Columbia precisely because most Columbia professors have never seen combat. Daily life on the Columbia Campus involves no bloodshed, no sacrifice, and no possibility of recognition. Indeed, for most college students daily life is less like Homer's ILIAD and more like THE LAST PICTURE SHOW by Larry McMurtry. But who wants to read a book set in Texas?

I guess that’s supposed to be deconstruction’s original program, right? People have been under some sort of metaphysical anesthesia, so you dismantle the metaphysics’ axioms and prejudices, show it in cross section and reveal the advantages of its abandonment. It’s literally aggravating: you awaken them to the fact that they’ve been unconsciously imbibing some narcotic pharmakon since they were old enough to say “Momma.” -Interview with Larry McCaffery (1993)

Recursive metafiction worships the narrative consciousness, makes “it” the subject of the text. Minimalism’s even worse, emptier, because it’s a fraud: it eschews not only self-reference but any narrative personality at all, tries to pretend there “is” no narrative consciousness in its text. This is so fucking American, man: either make something your God and cosmos and then worship it, or else kill it. -Interview with Larry McCaffery (1993)

A producer is a man with a dream. I say, ‘I don’t write, I don’t direct, I don’t act, I don’t compose music, I don’t design costumes. What do I do? I make things happen.’ A producer is like a chef. You get all the right ingredients together and make a tasty stew. You put the wrong ingredient together, it’ll taste bad” David Wolpert

Herbert opined of Lucas’ possible plagiarism: I think there’s reason to believe he did. Whether it’s actionable, I’m not the one to judge. Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Ted Sturgeon, Isaac Asimov, Barry Malzberg, and a few others of us who recognized elements of things we had done—or thought we did at least—in Star Wars are starting an organization that will be called, “We’re Too Big to Sue George Lucas.” This will only be viable if Lucas agrees to become an honorary member and picks up all the dinner tabs whenever we get together.

After a decade of false friendship, Larry would finally get his revenge. In

I get back in the Continental and continue down the road to the cafe. Then I pull in and there's Larry Johnson's '57 Ford pickup in the parking lot. As I enter the little cafe, I see Larry and Briggs in the corner, drinking some coffee and having a late breakfast. I go right over and sit down with them. We don't say much. David says something about Kirby getting a job at one of the studios. Kirby is very good with his hands and can fix anything, plus he has a very friendly personality. We are happy for him. Larry has to make a call and gets up, heading for the pay phone in the corner. He has us get him another coffee when the waitress comes back. Briggs looks at me and asks what I've been doing.

Carl Franzoni perhaps summed it up best when he declared rather bluntly that, “the Byrds’ records were manufactured.” The first album in particular was an entirely engineered affair created by taking a collection of songs by outside songwriters and having them performed by a group of nameless studio musicians (for the record, the actual musicians were Glen Campbell on guitar, Hal Blaine on drums, Larry Knechtel on bass, Leon Russell on electric piano, and Jerry Cole on rhythm guitar), after which the band’s trademark vocal harmonies, entirely a studio creation, were added to the mix. As would be expected, the Byrds’ live performances, according to Barney Hoskyns’ Waiting for the Sun, “weren’t terribly good.” But that didn’t matter much; the band got a lot of assistance from the media, with Time being among the first to champion the new band. And they also got a tremendous assist from Vito and the Freaks and from the Young Turks, as previously discussed.

I spent a lot of time as a volunteer in a nursing home in Amherst last summer. I was reading Dante's Divine Comedy to an old man, Mr. Shulman. One day, I asked him where he was from. He said, 'Just east of here, the Rockies.' I said, 'Mr. Shulman, the Rockies are west of here.' He did a voilà with his hands, and then said, 'I move mountains.' That stuck with me. Fiction either moves mountains it it's boring; it moves mountains or it sits on its ass. -Interview with Larry McCaffery (1993)

I spent a lot of time as a volunteer in a nursing home in Amherst last summer. I was reading Dante's Divine Comedy to an old man, Mr. Shulman. One day, I asked him where he was from. He said, 'Just east of here, the Rockies.' I said, 'Mr. Shulman, the Rockies are west of here.' He did a voilà with his hands, and then said, 'I move mountains.' That stuck with me. Fiction either moves mountains or it's boring; it moves mountains or it sits on its ass. -Interview with Larry McCaffery (1993)

I spent a lot of time as a volunteer in a nursing home in Amherst last summer. I was reading Dante's Divine Comedy to an old man, Mr. Shulman. One day, I asked him where he was from. He said, 'Just east of here, the Rockies.' I said, 'Mr. Shulman, the Rockies are west of here.' He did a voilà with his hands, and then said, 'I move mountains.' That stuck with me. Fiction either moves mountains or it's boring; it moves mountains or it sits on its ass." -Interview with Larry McCaffery (1993)

The Lawrence Sherman who went to Kansas City is the same Larry Sherman who had worked with David Weisburd in Minneapolis a few years earlier, establishing the Law of Crime Concentration. They were friends. They taught together for a time at Rutgers, where their department chairman was none other than Ronald Clarke, who had done the pioneering work on suicide. Clarke, Weisburd, and Sherman—with their separate interests in English town gas, the crime map of Minneapolis, and guns in Kansas City—were all pursuing the same revolutionary idea of coupling.

He had told Larry Ellison that his return strategy was to sell NeXT to Apple, get appointed to the board, and be there ready when CEO Gil Amelio stumbled. Ellison may have been baffled when Jobs insisted that he was not motivated by money, but it was partly true. He had neither Ellison’s conspicuous consumption needs nor Gates’s philanthropic impulses nor the competitive urge to see how high on the Forbes list he could get. Instead his ego needs and personal drives led him to seek fulfillment by creating a legacy that would awe people. A dual legacy, actually: building innovative products and building a lasting company. He wanted to be in the pantheon with, indeed a notch above, people like Edwin Land, Bill Hewlett, and David Packard. And the best way to achieve all this was to return to Apple and reclaim his kingdom.

Nonconformity is an affront to those in the mainstream. Our impulse is to dismiss this lifestyle, create reasons why it can’t work, why it doesn’t even warrant consideration. Why not? Living outdoors is cheap and can be afforded by a half year of marginal employment. They can’t buy things that most of us have, but what they lose in possessions, they gain in freedom. In Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, lead character Larry returns from the First World War and declares that he would like to “loaf.”23 The term “loafing” inadequately describes the life he would spend traveling, studying, searching for meaning, and even laboring. Larry meets with the disapproval of peers and would-be mentors: “Common sense assured…that if you wanted to get on in this world, you must accept its conventions, and not to do what everybody else did clearly pointed to instability.” Larry had an inheritance that enabled him to live modestly and pursue his dreams. Larry’s acquaintances didn’t fear the consequences of his failure; they feared his failure to conform. I’m no maverick. Upon leaving college I dove into the workforce, eager to have my own stuff and a job to pay for it. Parents approved, bosses gave raises, and my friends could relate. The approval, the comforts, the commitments wound themselves around me like invisible threads. When my life stayed the course, I wouldn’t even feel them binding. Then I would waiver enough to sense the growing entrapment, the taming of my life in which I had been complicit. Working a nine-to-five job took more energy than I had expected, leaving less time to pursue diverse interests. I grew to detest the statement “I am a…” with the sentence completed by an occupational title. Self-help books emphasize “defining priorities” and “staying focused,” euphemisms for specialization and stifling spontaneity. Our vision becomes so narrow that risk is trying a new brand of cereal, and adventure is watching a new sitcom. Over time I have elevated my opinion of nonconformity nearly to the level of an obligation. We should have a bias toward doing activities that we don’t normally do to keep loose the moorings of society. Hiking the AT is “pointless.” What life is not “pointless”? Is it not pointless to work paycheck to paycheck just to conform? Hiking the AT before joining the workforce was an opportunity not taken. Doing it in retirement would be sensible; doing it at this time in my life is abnormal, and therein lay the appeal. I want to make my life less ordinary.

These are a substantial number of “they” who once a year meet to deliberate the fate of national economies and, hence, entire populations. Many of them also believe in the mandate of eugenics, the practice of improving the human race to include reducing the population. Know that we do not have the names of every attendee. Only those who authorize the release of their names get mentioned in the public media. Daniel Estulin, author of The True Story of the Bilderberg Group, wrote that the group’s membership and meeting participants have represented a “who’s who” of the world power elite with familiar names like David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Gordon Brown, Angela Merkel, Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, Lloyd Blankfein, George Soros, Donald Rumsfeld, Rupert Murdoch, other heads of state, influential senators, congressmen, and parliamentarians, Pentagon and NATO brass, members of European royalty, selected media figures, and invited others. Such invitees have included President Obama along with many of his top officials. Estulin said that also represented at Bilderberg meetings are leading figures from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), IMF, World Bank, the Trilateral Commission, EU, and powerful central bankers from the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank (ECB), and the Bank of England. David Rockefeller, the head of the Rockefeller family financial empire, is believed to have been a leading Bilderberg attendee for years. Other wealthy elite members merely send representatives.

In Jerusalem, as elsewhere in Palestine, the Haganah's basic strategy reflected a philosophy propounded by David Ben-Gurion. What the Jews had, they must hold. No Jew was to leave his home, his farm, his kibbutz, his office without permission. Every outpost, every settlement, every village, no matter how isolated, was to be clung to as though it were Tel Aviv itself.

In Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, lead character Larry returns from the First World War and declares that he would like to “loaf.

Then Jack Hanna joined the fray: “How are you going to love something, Larry, unless you see something? You can’t love something and save something unless you see it.” Naomi had heard this argument before. It was ridiculous on its face, she thought. What about dinosaurs? People, and especially kids, were crazy about dinosaurs. They loved them, without ever having laid eyes on a single one.

David Phillips, who was involved in the early stages of planning for a post-Hussein Iraq, notes that during the postwar reconstruction efforts, "Relations between the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and the State Department became increasingly acrimonious. U.S. officials vied for control over the Iraq policy."32 Similarly, Larry Diamond, who was also involved in the reconstruction of Iraq, indicates that "A number of U.S. government agencies had a variety of visions of how political authority would be reestablished in Iraq.... In the bitter, relentless infighting among U.S. government agencies in advance of the war, none of these preferences clearly prevailed.

HENRY CLIMBED INTO my truck and buckled his seatbelt with the grimmest expression I had ever seen. His hair stood out in every direction, and his hands shook. “You okay, buddy?” I asked, trying to be gentle. “Do you want to go see Robin instead? She’d be glad to cut it, Henry.” Millie had followed him out, tapping her way down the sidewalk with a concerned frown between her dark brows. She now stood holding onto the passenger side door. I could tell she wanted to ride along, but Henry didn’t seem to want her to. “It’s a man date, right Henry? Men go to the barber. Not the salon.” Henry tapped his fingertips together nervously and wouldn’t look right or left. “Kite flying is an official sport in Thailand!” Henry blurted. Amelie bit her lip but stepped back from the passenger door. “Bye, Millie. I’ll bring him back. Don’t worry,” I called. She nodded and tried to smile, and I pulled away from the curb. Henry’s tapping became a cadence. Clack clack. Click click. It sounded like the rhythm Millie made with her stick when she walked. “Henry?” No response. Just clicking, all the way to the barbershop. I pulled up to Leroy’s shop and put my truck in park. I jumped out and came around to Henry’s door. Henry made no move to disembark. “Henry? Do you want to do this?” Henry looked pointedly at my shaggy locks and clicked his fingers. “I need a haircut, Henry. So do you. We’re men. We can do this.” “Ben Askren, Roger Federer, Shaun White, Troy Polamalu, David Beckham, Triple H.” “Triple H?” I started to laugh. Henry was listing athletes with long hair. “You’re getting desperate, Henry.” “Larry Fitzgerald? Tim Lincecum?” “Tim Lincecum, huh? He plays for the Giants, doesn’t he? Your favorite team, right?” Henry didn’t respond. “Ah, shit. What the hell. I didn’t want to cut my hair anyway. I kind of think your sister likes it.” The clicking slowed. “You wanna go buy a kite? I hear it’s an official sport in Thailand,” I said. Henry smiled the smallest ghost of a smile and nodded once.

David Sassoon For several decades, British designer David Sassoon has provided the best in evening wear for fashionable and famous customers from his high-profile store in London. His work has been featured in many international fashion shows and museums throughout the world, and his garments are in high demand at such notable stores as Sak’s Fifth Avenue, Harrods, and Neiman Marcus. The Princess of Wales would often make surprise visits to my shop, as I had made her going-away dress and many other outfits for her trousseau. In August 1982, Diana came to my shop with Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones, the daughter of Princess Margaret, who had been a bridesmaid at Diana’s wedding. The Princess was wearing a blue-and-white-striped sailor-style two-piece outfit; Sarah wore a white shirt and a cotton skirt, as it was a very hot day. Diana said that she would like to choose a long evening dress for Sarah as a present. The dress was to be worn at a ball at Balmoral Castle. This was Sarah’s first long dress, and Diana wanted her to have her dream dress. There were lots of giggles and excitement as Diana helped Sarah try on some of the dresses, and the dressing room was full of laughter. Finally, Sarah chose a bright red strapless taffeta ball dress, which made her feel very grown up. We brought them tea while the dress was being fitted, and Sarah, who obviously adored Diana, listened to her advice about what accessories would complement the dress. Sarah was so excited about her beautiful and glamorous present when they left the shop. Diana had made a young girl’s dream come true.

For the first three years of the show, Larry “Bud” Melman had a day job at a methadone clinic as a receptionist. Finally, we just hired him full time.

The list of those who told me they had been physically assaulted by David Miscavige: Mike Rinder, Gale Irwin, Marty Rathbun, Jefferson Hawkins, Tom De Vocht, Mark Fisher, Bruce Hines, Bill Dendiu, Guy White, Marc Headley, and Stefan Castle. Those who said they had witnessed such abuse: John Axel, Marty Rathbun, Janela Webster, Tom De Vocht, Marc Headley, Eric Knutson, Amy Scobee, Dan Koon, Steve Hall, Claire Headley, Mariette Lindstein, John Peeler, Andre Tabayoyan, Vicki Aznaran, Jesse Prince, Mark Fisher, Bill Dendiu, Mike Rinder, David Lingerfelter, Denise (Larry) Brennan, Debbie Cook, and Lana Mitchell.

I go out to dinner, I wind up I with a homework assignment.

I'm trying to elevate small talk to medium talk

Umm... You're not a serial killer or something, are you?

The imperial Prisoner of the United States has a lot less freedom than meaningless old me.

The position of CIA station chief is filled using an altogether different approach. Langley maintains its usual embedded subsidiary in the U.S. house of Lebanon, and for the employees of the CIA, Beirut is ground zero. It is the place where careers are made and lost, a tinderbox in which young and indestructible case officers put their tradecraft on the line to engage razor-sharp bomb-makers and witless suicidal jihadists. Iran and Pakistan might be as combustive, Iraq a few years earlier. But with the Jews to the south, the Persians to the north, and nearly twenty state-recognized religious sects, there is no more unsettled country on earth than Lebanon. And Larry Donnelly wouldn’t have been anywhere else

You should have seen it, Gail,” he said. “By God, it was something. This Minneapolis big shot, this city boy, wouldn’t let up. Kept saying to Pop, ‘Mighty fine boots. Mighty fine. Just hope you’re not tracking in any cow shit with those boots.’ Wouldn’t stop.” “Shhh. Watch your language. David can hear you.” “Just reporting. That’s all. Just saying how it was. Finally Pop says, ‘You don’t let up, I’m going to stick one of these boots up your ass. Then I’m going to track your shit all over this bar.

They were productively adversarial, like superforecasting team discussions. Managers grilled engineers and forced them to produce data to back up their assertions. The process had worked remarkably. The space shuttle was the most complex machine ever built, and all twenty-four flights had returned safely. But on the emergency conference call, that same quantitative culture led them astray. On their engineers’ advice, McDonald and two Thiokol VPs on the call initially supported a no-launch decision. The Challenger had already been cleared, so this was an eleventh-hour reversal. When NASA officials asked Thiokol engineers exactly what temperature range was safe for flight, they recommended setting a limit at 53 degrees, the lower bound of previous experience. NASA manager Larry Mulloy was flabbergasted. He thought the shuttle was supposed to be cleared to launch from 31 to 99 degrees. A last-minute 53-degree limit was setting an entirely new technical criteria for launches. It had never been discussed, was not backed by quantitative data, and meant that suddenly winter was off-limits for space exploration. Mulloy found it frustrating; he later called it “dumb.” How had the engineers arrived at that number? “They said because they had flown at 53 degrees before,” a NASA manager reflected, “which is no reason to me. That’s tradition rather than technology.” Boisjoly was asked again for data to support his claim, “and I said I have none other than what is being presented.” With the conference call at an impasse, a Thiokol VP asked for a five-minute “offline caucus,” during which Thiokol concluded that they had no more data to provide. They returned to the call a half hour later with a new decision: proceed with launch. Their official document read, “temperature data not conclusive on predicting primary O-ring blow-by.” When conference call participants from NASA and Thiokol later spoke with investigators and gave interviews, they repeatedly brought up the “weak engineering position,” as one put it. Their statements comprised a repetitive chorus: “Unable to quantify”; “supporting data was subjective”; “hadn’t done a good technical job”; “just didn’t have enough conclusive data.” NASA was, after all, the agency that hung a framed quote in the Mission Evaluation Room: “In God We Trust, All Others Bring Data.

One thing about Hitler that I admire is that he wouldn't take any shit from magicians.

there is the prophetic promise that the divine Spirit will be rather fully active in the scion of the restored Davidic royal line (Isa 11:1-3), in the "servant" in whom God delights (Isa 42:1), and even among the descendents of Israel more broadly (Isa 44:3). This idea of a wider sharing of the experience of the Spirit is also famously projected in Joel 2:28-29 (MT and LXX 3:1-5, a text explicitly cited in Acts 2:16-21 as fulfilled in the phenomena of the Pentecost episode). In a lengthy oracle, there is the following divine promise:

To be sure, the term is applied to God in the OT, occasionally in relationship to Israel generally (Hos 11:1), and particularly with reference to the Davidic king (e.g., Ps 2:7; 89:26-27; 2 Sam 7:14). In some Jewish texts, God is also specifically "Father" to the righteous (e.g., Wis 2:16).

Anyone can be confident with a full head of hair. But a confident bald man - there's your diamond in the rough

Greg Bear, Alan Dean Foster, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle.

David shook his head in disbelief.  “Do you think I’m a fool or something?” “I didn’t say that,” Christopher replied. “Mr. Vance, I know you were up for that sales manager promotion at the dealership.  The same promotion that Larry ended up getting

Albert Payne explained his ill-fated trip to China to inspect manufacturing plants being used by American companies, including the plant with which Kendall Toys had contracted. He told Sloane that Larry

David S. Young, Chapter: Foresight, the Lead that the Leader Has. Through foresight we help congregations shape an incremental, measurable three-year plan. This is a very artistic process. I use a triangle and have the church members put their vision on the top, the strengths on the lower angle, and the need on the other angle. I put foresight in the center.

Kettner and lesion work by David Lavond that the cerebellum was involved in eyeblink conditioning, but the cerebellar lesion

anyone I apologize. Students in my laboratory at the University of Oregon Medical School (including MD-MS students) 1959-1967: Lew Bettinger, David Bliss, Joel Davis,

A long time ago, in a small village, there lived a wise old monk named Tenzen. One day his neighbors discovered that their sixteen-year-old daughter was pregnant. Furious, the parents confronted her and demanded to know the name of the baby’s father. Through tears she confessed, “It was the Zen master, Tenzen.” The parents went to Tenzen and angrily accused him of betraying their trust. “How could you do this?” they cried out. “You are going to raise this child!” The great sage listened attentively, replying with no emotion. “Is that so?” When the baby was born, they brought the infant to the master’s door and said, “This baby is now your responsibility.” Taking the child in his arms, he replied, “Is that so?” He then compassionately cared for the newborn. As word of the teacher’s misdeeds spread throughout the countryside, he lost both his reputation and his followers. This meant nothing to him as he continued to care for the child with great love. A year later, feeling terrible about what she had done, the young mother confessed to her parents that Tenzen was not the father. Instead, it was the young man in the butcher shop whom they had forbidden her to see. Horrified and embarrassed, the parents returned to the master’s compound to seek forgiveness. “We are so sorry,” they said. “We have just learned you are not the baby’s father.” “Is that so?” “With your blessing, we would like our baby back.” “Is that so?” And with that the master gently returned the child to the parents.

People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway. If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have, knowing that it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.” “Who wrote this?” “Mother Teresa.