TELEVISION QUOTES III

quotations about television

Television is a daily menace to housework, and a nightly menace to homework.

EVAN ESAR

20,000 Quips & Quotes


They say that ninety percent of TV is junk. But ninety percent of everything is junk.

GENE RODDENBERRY

attributed, A Companion to Television


I haven't had a TV in 10 years, and I really don't miss it. 'Cause it's always so much more fun to be with people than it ever was to be with a television.

CHUCK PALAHNIUK

San Francisco Bay Guardian, October 30, 2002

Tags: Chuck Palahniuk


I consider the television set as the American fireplace, around which the whole family will gather.

RED SKELTON

attributed, A Companion to Television


When you're young, you look at television and think, There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought.

STEVE JOBS

interview, WIRED Magazine, February 1996

Tags: Steve Jobs


Television is more interesting than people. If it were not, we would have people standing in the corners of our rooms.

ALAN COREN

attributed, A Companion to Television


So, please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install, a lovely bookcase on the wall.

ROALD DAHL

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory


Can we find nothing good to say about TV? Well, yes, it brings scattered solitaries into a sort of communion. TV allows your isolated American to think that he participates in the life of the entire country. It does not actually place him in a community, but his heart is warmed with the suggestion (on the whole false) that there is a community somewhere in the vicinity and that his atomized consciousness will be drawn back toward the whole.

SAUL BELLOW

"The Distracted Public", It All Adds Up

Tags: Saul Bellow


Before, my managers knew never to mention a TV series to me, because they knew how furious that would make me. I'd look at it like a vote of no confidence in my movie career, that I was going to be sent off to the television graveyard. But at a certain point I looked at the stuff I was consuming -- The Sopranos, The Wire -- and I realised the writers went to TV because they'd been screwed by the movies. It was still a difficult moment for me. I mean, my hand was shaking. Then they sent me three scripts, and they were three of the best scripts I'd seen in years. I was like, "Schmuck, you could've jumped on this years ago!"

KEVIN BACON

The Guardian, May 20, 2017

Tags: Kevin Bacon


Television is actually closer to reality than anything in books. The madness of TV is the madness of human life.

CAMILLE PAGLIA

attributed, A Companion to Television

Tags: Camille Paglia


I find television very educational. Every time someone switches it on I go into another room and read a good book.

GROUCHO MARX

attributed, Halliwell's Filmgoer's Companion

Tags: Groucho Marx


People are definitely looking to television as a place they want to feel. They want to laugh, they want to cry, they want to enjoy. I think what the mood of the country has told us is that television is a little bit of an escape.

CHANNING DUNGEY

"Hit show 'Roseanne' is returning to television", WGN9, May 17, 2017


One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.

KURT VONNEGUT

Cold Turkey

Tags: Kurt Vonnegut


Television is for appearing on, not looking at.

NOEL COWARD

The Letters of Noel Coward


Even the bad of television has its good: the worse the program is for children, the quieter it keeps them.

EVAN ESAR

20,000 Quips & Quotes


In films, you're pampered as an actor. There are many breaks and you get to relax in between shots. The format of television is faster. After this stint, my respect for television actors has doubled. They have to be on the job all the while and at the same time deliver perfect takes as there is no luxury of retakes like in films.

CHI GURUDUTT

"Television is like playing a game of 20-20", The Times of India, June 5, 2017


Peak TV is a perplexing time -- filled so often with wildly exciting premises and wildly unfulfilled promises.

MOZE HALPERIN

"This Week's Top 5 TV Picks", Flavorwire, June 12, 2017


You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to believe that the tube is reality and your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you: you dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you even think like the tube! This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God's name, you people are the real thing, WE are the illusion!

PADDY CHAYEFSKY

Network


I'd park myself a few inches from the RCA color television set we had. I was so close, I could feel the static electricity of the screen tugging at the peach fuzz on my face and smell the wonderful aroma of electrically heated dust coming from the vents of that lustrous wooden console. No matter how many times my mother yelled, "Kevin! Move back before you go blind!" I'd still feel myself powerfully drawn into that world, and the worn-out seats of my Lee jeans bore witness to the pull I was powerless to resist.

KEVIN CLASH

My Life as a Furry Red Monster


Panning TV in a meaningful way is a way of praising it overall: It's saying its deserving of serious critique, and if you can't pan a medium, you can't critique it.

EMILY NUSSBAUM

"On Loving -- and Panning -- Shows in Television's Renaissance Moment: A Report from the Split Screens Festival", Filmmaker Magazine, June 7, 2017