Latest Harry Shearer Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• I just think everyone knows you go on those [political satire] shows if you're a politician to, "humanize yourself" - to show, "Hey, I can take a joke." Well, why should satire be in the service of humanizing these people who are supposed to be the target of our venom and vitriol? I think that's unseemly.

  Harry Shearer

  Thinking, People, Political

• The Simpsons will end as soon as Fox is able to find an 8 p.m. comedy hit to replace it - so I give us another 50 years.

  Harry Shearer

  Years, Giving, Able

  "How Harry Shearer Discovered the Soul of Richard Nixon". Interview with David Corn, www.motherjones.com. October 17, 2014.

• Satire is an art best practiced behind the back of the intended target. I think inviting politicians on a satirical show becomes a very big trap. Because one of two things happen: Either you have to kind of unsharpen your fangs because you can't be quite as cruel to people to their face as you are behind their backs... Or you don't defang, and those guests get the word and they stop coming.

  Harry Shearer

  Art, Thinking, Two

  "How Harry Shearer Discovered the Soul of Richard Nixon". Interview with David Corn, www.motherjones.com. October 17, 2014.

• [C. Montgomery] Burns is much purer evil than Nixon was. I think it's the purity of his evil that attracts me as a comic character.

  Harry Shearer

  Character, Thinking, Evil

• Nixon's genius was that he was able to portray himself as the toughest of the anti-communists, and yet run on a platform that he had a plan to end the Vietnam War. And, of course, his plan was to prolong it until his second election - but he didn't tell us that then.

  Harry Shearer

  Running, War, Able

  "How Harry Shearer Discovered the Soul of Richard Nixon". Interview with David Corn, www.motherjones.com. October 17, 2014.

• I'm not sure that there's anybody else that's as psychologically complex and who's given us this window into his soul that Nixon gave us. That's what I find absolutely addictive and seductive.

  Harry Shearer

  Seductive, Soul, Window

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• When I was growing up, we learned our history almost as lives of the saints. And it came as a shock, "Oh, Jefferson had slaves?" It always comes as a shock to us that elevation to the White House didn't somehow cleanse them of all their deep character flaws.

  Harry Shearer

  Growing Up, Character, White

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• I think Nixon says a lot about those times. It was possibly hard, in the '90s and early 2000s to understand the grip of fear that communism had on the country in the 1950s and 1960s - a fear Nixon rode like a endless great wave on the Pacific to high office. I'm sure, though there's no evidence of it, one of the things that rankled him down deep was that it was called McCarthyism and not Nixonism.

  Harry Shearer

  Country, Thinking, Office

  "How Harry Shearer Discovered the Soul of Richard Nixon". Interview with David Corn, www.motherjones.com. October 17, 2014.

• I think the British learn their history through the prism of this gallery of grotesques known as the royals.

  Harry Shearer

  Thinking, Royal, Gallery

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• When Nixon died, on my radio show I started doing sketches with three basic conceits: One, there's a place called Heaven. Two, Nixon got in. And three, he's still taping.

  Harry Shearer

  Two, Heaven, Three

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• I wasn't playing Nixon's satirical stick figure. I was playing Nixon the man. As an actor, I felt I had to get to the deeply flawed humanity of the guy.

  Harry Shearer

  Men, Guy, Humanity

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• I couldn't help but be struck that this guy I had thought was the embodiment of everything wrong with American politics, a lot of his domestic policy was mind-numbingly, head-spinningly to the left of Obama's. It was under Nixon that the EPA was created. It was under Nixon that OSHA was created. Under Nixon that the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts were passed.

  Harry Shearer

  Air, Water, Guy

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• If Nixon were a Republican senator today, he would have been primaried out.

  Harry Shearer

  Today, Republican, Senators

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• I happened upon a memoir by a midlevel White House staffer, and he had been in the room that [Nixon's last] night [in office]. This guy's memoir told me what Nixon's last words were. And they were, on August 8, 1974, to the crew: "Have a Merry Christmas, fellas!" That was just so bizarre.

  Harry Shearer

  Merry Christmas, Night, White

  "How Harry Shearer Discovered the Soul of Richard Nixon". Interview with David Corn, www.motherjones.com. October 17, 2014.

• Here's a guy [Richard Nixon] who had no gift for small talk, never liked to be around strangers, was physically awkward, and he goes into the one business that calls for ease with strangers and a gift for small talk.

  Harry Shearer

  Guy, Awkward, Ease

• I've been doing Nixon pretty much my whole professional life. I was in this comedy group called the Credibility Gap in Los Angeles when he was president. I was doing Nixon on the radio, and when we did live shows I physicalized him - if that's a word - for the first time. And then I did a Nixon sketch on a very short-lived NBC show called Sunday Best.

  Harry Shearer

  Sunday, Nbc, President

  "How Harry Shearer Discovered the Soul of Richard Nixon". Interview with David Corn, www.motherjones.com. October 17, 2014.

• For a guy who is always banging on about the masculine virtues, Nixon had this remarkable proclivity for very dainty gestures.

  Harry Shearer

  Guy, Gestures, Virtue

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• There were really funny characteristics about this guy [Richard Nixon], chief of which would be that he seemed to devote about 85 percent of his waking energy to suppressing any sign of his emotional response to anything that was going on around him, and the other 15 percent blurting out those authentic responses in the silliest and most inopportune ways. And he had these smiles that would come at the most inappropriate times - just flashes that there was an inner life screaming to get out.

  Harry Shearer

  Emotional, Guy, Would Be

• Privilege has its own way of seeing the world. It's not about the kind of people they are; it's about the situation they're in.

  Harry Shearer

  World, Way, Privilege

  Source: www.avclub.com

• Anybody who says that having the public recognize them and relate to the work they do is irritating should get into another line of work. You're in this business for people to know what you do and like it.

  Harry Shearer

  People, Lines, Should

  Source: www.avclub.com

• If you're going to do something that lasts 90 minutes, you can't really do it with stick figures.

  Harry Shearer

  Lasts, Sticks, Figures

  Source: www.avclub.com

• You're not just looking for laughs, but you're trying to do the characters first, and then the laughs come afterwards.

  Harry Shearer

  Character, Laughing, Trying

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I think in most cases, if you're with good people, comedy creation happens faster in collaboration. That's how I can tell if it's a good collaboration: If it's faster than me by myself, then it works. If it's slower than me by myself, then I get out of the room.

  Harry Shearer

  Thinking, People, Collaboration

  Source: www.avclub.com

• Music can happen with equal ease as a solo or collaborative venture, it seems to me.

  Harry Shearer

  Ease, Venture, Solo

  Source: www.avclub.com

• Music often happens even faster than comedy in terms of the creation.

  Harry Shearer

  Comedy, Creation, Faster

  Source: www.avclub.com