Quotes from Nicholas Stoller

R-rated comedies make as much money as PG-13. And I think the audiences wanna be shocked. Especially with comedy.

The frustrations and joys of parenthood are just hard to understand until you have a kid... the constant fight you're having with yourself, like loving being with your kid but also being kind of bored and wanting to look at your iPhone - it's kind of an interesting thing that's hard to write about before you've experienced it.

I think the best romantic comedies are hard funny - no soft jokes, but ones that make you, like, guffaw. I also think that they have to make you feel good, ideally, and make you feel warm inside at the end.

Yes, the fans are going to get their money's worth. It's like...and everything on there is funny. It's not like random crap they put in a movie. I think it's all very funny, so.

I knew after 'Sarah Marshall' that my favorite genre is romantic comedy. Nothing is more satisfying than a great romantic comedy.

I watched all kinds of dirty movies as a kid. My parents were very liberal about that, and I was still an uber-nerd who never drank or did drugs. I don't think it matters.

I just watched 'Lethal Weapon' for the first time, and it's awesome... and so violent! Mel is out of his mind in that movie. Although now we know he's just insane - he was very much in his mind.

If you're engaged more than a year, there's something up. There's lot of debate as to whether one should or shouldn't get married, but when you get engaged, it's a promise to get married, and if you don't just do it within a year, one of the parties is using the excuse of, like, 'I can't find the right venue' to put off the wedding.

I think people try to jam a lot of artificial plot devices into a lot of romantic comedies, and they don't treat it with the respect I believe it deserves.

Everyone forgets that what's fun about a romantic comedy is how these two people are going to fight with each other and how's that going to be funny.

I love the romantic comedy genre. It's a genre rich with many of the best movies ever made and I try to treat it with the respect that Shakespeare treated it with.

Basically, I always thought that if I had a movie that did well enough and warranted having a sequel, I would seriously entertain it because that's a huge blessing when that happens in your career.

As a comedy writer, I'm always praying for the day I can tell a self-aware/break-the-fourth-wall style of joke.

All of the things I've directed, I'm really emotionally close to. That's why I choose to direct them and spend years on them.

A big part of being in a relationship or marriage or whatever is you have to eventually compromise. Your life doesn't end up exactly the way you think it's going to, and if it's the right relationship, you might have to compromise what you're doing professionally.

A good romantic comedy is my favorite movie to watch.

You just never know with movies how they'll be seen in a few years. You have no idea. Like, movies that were super popular when they came out have been forgotten. And other movies - and I put 'Sarah Marshall' in this - kind of weirdly stand the test of time a little bit.

I would never make a purely autobiographical movie, because it would be incredibly boring. But I always bring something. It's usually some emotional truth I've experienced, like in 'Get Him to the Greek,' the relationship between Jonah Hill and Elisabeth Moss, I had certainly had that kind of relationship with a girlfriend.

I'm pretty old-fashioned. I feel most people - and this is purely from observation; I'm not an expert - but I think most people want to get married, whatever one might say about the institution of marriage, especially if you are in a long relationship.

When the photographer is nearby, I like to say, 'Quick, get a photo of me looking into the camera,' because I'm never looking into the camera. Christopher Nolan looks into the camera, but I think most directors don't, so whenever you see a picture of a director looking at the camera, it's fake.

I've thrown way more movie parties than real parties. My real life is so much more boring.

The huge advantage of boarding school is that it throws you into the social fire. Every social interaction I've had since then has been a million times easier. Literally, ever since then, it's all been child's play.

There are so few good comedy sequels. The only one in recent memory that's good is '22 Jump Street.' It's a hard genre.

I love watching how people who are in love with each other deal with each other. Every time I've had a fight with an ex-girlfriend, at the time they're horrible, but when I look back they're often funny and weird, and that kind of stuff makes me laugh.