Quotes from Harold Ramis

The comic edge of 'Ghostbusters' will always be the same. It's still treating the supernatural with a totally mundane sensibility.

As a director on 'The Office,' there's a tremendous weight that comes with directing features. I was being asked to direct a show that had already won an Emmy for Best Comedy. Steve Carell and the cast had already won the Screen Actor's Guild Awards.

We were tremendously encouraged by the testing of Analyze That. Audiences loved it. They were telling us that they liked it as much as the original. We recorded the laughs in the theater.

I feel a big obligation to the audience, almost in a moral sense, to say something useful. If I'm going to spend a year of my life on these things, I want something that I feel that strongly about.

I have no trouble selling out—I'm a benevolent hack, in a certain way—but I want to pander for something I believe in.

No matter what I have to say, I'm still trying to say it in comedic form.

If people offer me decent roles in good films, of course I'll take it. But I just didn't like the actor lifestyle. You end up focusing all your energy on trying to get parts you don't even want.

I'm thinking of doing a marital comedy for one of the studios, but I want it to be so painful that it'll have a profound effect on married couples who see it together.

Comedy is essentially made by young men, or older men with some form of arrested development, for young men or immature older men.

Acting is all about big hair and funny props... All the great actors knew it. Olivier knew it, Brando knew it.

I'm not a believer in the pratfall. I don't think it's funny just to have someone fall down.

Nothing reinforces a professional relationship more than enjoying success with someone.

I never work just to work. It's some combination of laziness and self-respect.

How one handles success or failure is determined by their early childhood.

Billy Crystal knows how to make people laugh. He's got 30 years on stage... there's no telling him what's funny.

We all wish we could be in more than one place at the same time. People with families feel guilty all the time-if we spend too much time with our family, we feel we're not working hard enough.

I was the little guy who knew how to tie a necktie. It came from having absentee parents. They were tremendously loving and caring people who, by circumstance, had to go to work.

I never read Playboy before I started working there and stopped reading it the day I quit.

Never hit anyone in anger, unless you're absolutely sure you can get away with it.

With both Caddyshack and Vacation, it's not like the subjects were serious enough that they engaged my interest for another round. I love the characters, and the actors were great, but I didn't see the need to make another Vacation movie.

The movie 'Vacation' had a whole different ending. They never even got to the amusement park, Wallyworld, at the end of 'Vacation.' The last 20 minutes of the film was entirely different - and bombed so badly that the audience just stopped cold.

Films are big hits when they touch a lot of people. Things are not funny in a vacuum, they're funny because we respond to some personal dislocation, some embarrassment, some humiliation, some pain we've suffered, or some desire we have.

We all wish we could be in more than one place at the same time. People with families feel guilty all the time-if we spend too much time with our family, we feel we're not working hard enough.

At a certain point, you have to convince the actors that you've done the right thing. The way I work, if I can't convince them, I've got to move on. I can't coerce them or browbeat them.