B.J. Novak Quotes & Sayings

Everything helped a little bit, at first; but nothing really helped. — B.J. Novak

If you love something, let it go.
If you don't love something, definitely let it go.
Basically, just drop everything, who cares. — B.J. Novak

We talked for four hours. I don't remember most of it, but often a little moment in an unrelated conversation or alone on the street will trigger a memory of it I didn't know I had. So I know it's all there somewhere. — B.J. Novak

John Grisham exhaled, feeling his breath leave his body as he did, like his wife's yoga instructor had taught him to do that one time. He never went back to that yoga instructor, but he still thought about that session sometimes. — B.J. Novak

Slow and steady wins the race, till truth and talent claim their place. — B.J. Novak

Battered Women: sounds delicious. Doesn't make it right. — B.J. Novak

There's always going to be one more thing. Because that's what infinite feels like. And the difference between love and everything else is that it's infinite, it's built out of something infinite, or it feels like it is, anyway, which is the same thing to us. — B.J. Novak

'The Office' is less a comedy than so many other 'comedies' that have been on the air. It's really about the balance between what is real and what is comic. — B.J. Novak

I wanted to be a writer first, and I struck out in the world to be a writer first, and then found stand-up as a more creative outlet, as a 3D way to be creative. — B.J. Novak

I opened up a bit and explained that I have a type I'm drawn to naturally, but that I've found that the women I've ended up loving the most have never been what I've thought of as my type, maybe because part of love is being helpless, being out of control of your own emotions. — B.J. Novak

You have infinite time here, and there are infinite things to do, but you still don't end up doing much of it. You do what you love most, over and over. — B.J. Novak

I was sad that summer was over. But I was happy that it was over for my enemies, too. — B.J. Novak

eople - even good, impressive people - always want something simple and unimpressive. Everything good and impressive that they do in their lives is a result of the impressive path they take to get what they want - not a result of wanting an impressive thing. — B.J. Novak

But nobody remembers how long anything takes; they only remember how good it was in the end. — B.J. Novak

What needed to stop was the succession of dates with these relatively impressive, relatively interesting people, when I could tell from the first minute that everyone here was going to end as a runner-up in a long race to nowhere in particular, broken-down, exhausted, no one wearing a medal. — B.J. Novak

If people are well paid for reality television and cotton candy and dunking a basketball, why can't they be well paid for changing young minds? — B.J. Novak

You meet a finite number of people in your life. It feels to you like it's infinite, but it's not. I think it's the biggest thing I can see that you can't. — B.J. Novak

Love always won. — B.J. Novak

Different people have different styles, but there is an opportunity as a director to be a writer in every moment, with every visual cue and every piece of production design. Everything is a decision, and everything can be obsessed over. — B.J. Novak

Wasn't he approaching Ricardo Montalban? Probably because there were more interesting things in heaven than Ricardo Montalban. — B.J. Novak

All eyes are beautiful, I said, which is why it's such an easy compliment. — B.J. Novak

Didn't they realize how much interesting shit there was to see and do in this world if you just woke up at a normal fucking time like a normal fucking person? — B.J. Novak

Being young was her thing, and she was the best at it. But every year, more and more girls came out of nowhere and tried to steal her thing.
One of these days I'm gong to have to get a new thing, she thought to herself
but as quietly as she could, because she knew that if anyone caught her thinking this thought, her thing would be right over right then. — B.J. Novak

But no matter what their friends told them, they would always know what really happened. They just kept driving faster, and outran the rain. — B.J. Novak

People who knew me and sympathized with me were determined to set me up with the other people they sympathized with and were always surprised when I would turn down their offer of what they thought of as romantic charity. "What's the harm?" they would ask me, truly surprised. The harm, besides those hours that actually do matter when you barely have one night off every couple of weeks, is the little mark you get on you every time you open up a door to a hope and then close it fast in disappointment. It leaves a nick, or a dent, and those nicks and dents are not invisible. I used to see them all the time. — B.J. Novak

In my opinion, there are two types of perfect. The first is the type that seems so obvious and intuitive to you and everyone else that in a perfect world it would simply be considered standard; but, in reality, in our flawed world, what should be considered standard is actually so rare that it has to be elevated to the level of "perfect." This is the type of perfect that makes you and most other people think, "Why isn't everything like this? Why is it so hard to find ... " a black V-neck cotton sweater, or a casual non-chain restaurant with comfortable booths, etc. - "that is just exactly the way everyone knows something like this should be?" "Perfect," we all say with relief when we finally find something like this that is exactly as it should be. "Perfect. Why was this so hard to find?"
The other type of perfect is the type you never could have expected and then could never replicate. — B.J. Novak

It is an inside joke of history that all its most exciting adventures inevitably end their careers as homework. Beheadings, rebellions, thousand-year wars, incest on the royal throne, electricity, art, opera, dogs in outer space. — B.J. Novak

CHILD: "Why does carrot cake have the best icing?" MOTHER: "Because it needs the best icing." Quantum Nonlocality and the Death of Elvis Presley You may remember — B.J. Novak

Discussion question: Do you think Julie should fuck the warlord? Why or why not? — B.J. Novak

I think it's better to not know certain things. It gives the world an extra bit of mystery, which is important to us as human beings. — B.J. Novak

He started writing poetry again, but it didn't come as easily. It was hard now to get past the self-consciousness - the silliness, really - of being such a well-established adult applying himself, seriously, to such a youthful joy. — B.J. Novak

Travel is impossible, but daydreaming about travel is easy. — B.J. Novak

Do you think Johnny Depp should have drive his motorcycle off the mountain highway to his death? Why or why not? — B.J. Novak

But I didn't mind. I loved that everything was cataloged and ready to go and that I was technically now living and sleeping in a library. — B.J. Novak

You want to meet someone who likes the same things you do, and who likes you most when you're most being yourself, so that when you are in a relationship, the person will truly be compatible with the real you. — B.J. Novak

What's the difference between this school and a happy retirement community?" The room was silent again. "The difference is 'rithmetic! A retired person living by the ocean, just doing a little reading and writing till the end of their days - that's the dream, right? 'What do you do all day?' 'Some reading, a little writing.' Sounds idyllic, right? And yet school sucks. Everybody hates it. What's the difference? 'Rithmetic! It's time somebody put their finger on this fucking obvious thing. — B.J. Novak

Mindy Kaling gets her own line in the acknowledgments, as previously negotiated by her representatives. Thanks, Mindy. I love you and you're the best. — B.J. Novak

It feels like the world is made of music, and you are the world. — B.J. Novak

I do not have very much office experience. — B.J. Novak

It was a good thing they were used to love, or they might have fainted from the size of the feeling. — B.J. Novak

The Battle Creek, Michigan, headquarters of Kellogg's looks like a spaceship built to look like a pyramid that was then hastily converted into a public library during a period of intergalactic peace. — B.J. Novak

I feel like I didn't earn these stories, I feel like they just happened to me. — B.J. Novak

Do you think why not is ultimately a better question than why? Why or why not? — B.J. Novak

Josh Funk and Hunter Fraser: we haven't been in touch in years, but you made me feel like the funniest kid in the world. I would stay up late on school nights to write things to try to make you laugh the next day in class, and you inspired the one piece of advice on writing that I've ever felt qualified to give: write for the kid sitting next to you. — B.J. Novak

He kissed her for an eternity, which was fine, because heaven had eternities to burn. Then he kissed her for another. — B.J. Novak

He seemed to be blazing outside the lines of his own body, as if he were drawn in crayon by an excited five-year-old; — B.J. Novak

Regret is just perfectionism plus time. — B.J. Novak

Love always won in the end. No matter how it happened, no matter what it took, no matter what it meant. Fair or not, true or not, love won. — B.J. Novak

The cute one?" "No, the other cute one." "Oh, she's cute too. — B.J. Novak

Why do u always post pics of ur food!?
He did it because it made him feel like he was eating his meals with more people. — B.J. Novak

And anyone will tell you that's the whole point. You want to meet someone who likes the same things you do, and who likes you most when you're most being yourself. — B.J. Novak

The most exciting thing I aspire to do is to write something new that I know is going to work, or perform something that I know is going to make people laugh. — B.J. Novak

I can't even handle love, there's no way I can handle it being taken away. I won't survive it. Please. Please. Please!
I said that I had something to say to her, which made her listen in a way that she didn't when I simply said things without the preface. Even though the preface meant nothing, it calmed her, just as it calmed real people, for the same no-reason.
I told her what people tell people. That this was what it felt like when love was taken away - but that it wasn't the truth, it was just a feeling. It would pass. It would take time.
She would recharge.
She didn't believe me.
No one ever believes it, I said. That's part of what the feeling is. — B.J. Novak

I could imagine being his mom and loving him a lot, if that makes sense. — B.J. Novak

And good luck to you, tortoise," whispered the hare, leaning in close. "And just so you know - nobody knows this, and if you tell anyone I said it, I'll deny it - but I'm not really a hare. I'm a rabbit." This wasn't true - the hare just said it to fuck with him. — B.J. Novak

Pay him back, we really would have to do something — B.J. Novak

I'm a believer in trusting the director. — B.J. Novak

It's not always enough to be brave, I realized years later. You have to be brave and contribute something positive, too. Brave on its own is just a party trick. — B.J. Novak

In the aftermath of an athletic humiliation on an unprecedented scale - a loss to a tortoise in a footrace so staggering that, his tormenters teased, it would not only live on in the record books, but would transcend sport itself, and be taught to children around the world in textbooks and bedtime stories for centuries; that hundreds of years from now, children who had never heard of a "tortoise" would learn that it was basically a fancy type of turtle from hearing about this very race - the hare retreated, understandably, into a substantial period of depression and self-doubt. — B.J. Novak

There's not many good comedies to watch - you know, comedies that make you glad you watched them. — B.J. Novak

You think a million billion more things will come your way, a million billion more versions of everything. But no, everything that actually causes that infinite feeling, the circumstances of every infinite feeling, is so, so finite. — B.J. Novak

Good comics gravitate to each other; you know who's your type of person by watching them onstage, hopefully. — B.J. Novak