Daniel Handler Quotes

Slim Shady is just the evil thoughts that come into my head. Things I shouldn't be thinking about. Not to be gimmicky, but people should be able to determine when I'm serious and when I'm f... around. That's why a lot of my songs are funny. I got a warped sense of humor I guess.

Usually the intention of the artistic effect is too sophisticated for most people to understand, sort of like a joke that they don't get so they don't think it's funny.

I think you need to be able to see a lot of negative in things in order to extract material, so there's probably something to that. A lot of the people I used to work with were very, very, very unfunny offstage, so that's a pretty common thing.

It's almost inherent, but I'm a massive Stanley Kubrick fan. I'm a big admirer of what guys like Christopher Nolan have been able to do. For me, to be able to try to make big films that reach a lot of people, and that hopefully have something to say, is a lofty goal, but that's my goal.

I know the world that I am painting is not a reality. It is a whim, an entertainment to provoke something in people, whether as escapism or relief. I think that is very valid.

They say Im demonic in humor in the sense that I think people need somebody to wake up their mental processes.

I don't think the people of the slave states will ever consider the subject of slavery in its true light till some other argument is resorted to other than moral persuasion.

My way of looking at the world is that if it is true, it is funny and it is dark. No matter how dark it is, I just think it is funny. I can't help it.

I think I'm getting there, but it's very hard to perform at my absolute peak when an awful lot of people come just to make their presence known, when the lights go down and all you can hear is people screaming.

It was one of Hulu's first original shows to really go out there. Now a year has passed, and the second season is getting a great response. I think the show [Difficult People] itself creatively has evolved, has gotten much richer and tighter.

The script is like music to me. I approach it like it's a musical piece and I hear how it's supposed to sound when people say the words. There's rhythms and there's intonations and things, and so, when somebody comes in and hits the notes that I hear, I go okay. Or, they come close enough, and then I'll say "Well how about you try it like this?" and if they have a good ear and they can pick it up, then I think okay, they've got it.

I love the idea of comedy in horror. I think this should be allowed.

I think people like to exaggerate about the number of takes you do.

In thinking of light, if we can think about what it can do, and what it is, by thinking about itself, not about what we wanted it to do for other things, because again we've used light as people might be used, in the sense that we use it to light paintings. We use it to light so that we can read. We don't really pay much attention to the light itself. And so turning that and letting light and sound speak for itself is that you figure out these different relationships and rules.

Write to amuse? What an appalling suggestion! I write to make people anxious and miserable and to worsen their indigestion.

People think "The Office" was improvised, but it's all on the page. We do that because what we found is that in the early days of "The Office," we went in with it sort of 80 percent scripted and we did some things and then we improv'd and we did - you know, and it gets a laugh on the floor because it's the first time they've heard it.

I love music. It's always been a big part of my life, and I don't think people should, you know, judge me by my last name instead of listening to the album. I think the music definitely speaks for itself, and it's a great album.

You usually get one or the other, you get someone who knows how to tell a story but they don't necessarily know about light and camera and rhythm, or you get someone who can make beautiful images but they can't necessarily tell a great story. He does both and I think he's going to be one of the film-makers that our time is remembered for.

There's a woman in the United States who predicted the plane we were traveling on would crash. Now, a lot of people would like to think we were scared into saying a prayer. What we did actually--we drank.

I'd like to think I am taking people on a journey; I am not just entertaining people, but giving them something to think about when they leave.

I think there were moments on Snow White where I wished there was a little bit more of a sick humor toward Ravenna. But maybe the tone of the movie couldn't really support that. So you always have to kind of figure out where you are and adapt to it.

I have been lucky that some critics joined the mob in loving something I've done, or in appreciating it. I've been lucky. But most of the critics don't like what the people like. I think they have a very strange job, and they are meant to criticize.

I think what's difficult is proving to people that a script actually does work and sometimes the laughter might not be on the page, it might be between the lines.

It's interesting, the worse things get in cities, the tougher that cities get, the more brutal the humor is. The tougher things people face, the darker the sense of humor gets and I find that incredibly optimistic.

Dark humor appealed to me because it was a bigger laugh than you could get with anything else. Seeing people laugh at something inappropriate with their whole bodies, a guttural, visceral laugh beyond a mere "hah."