Hardwick Quotes & Sayings

I made a lot of changes in my life between my twenties and thirties, and it all sort of revolves around how I think people with nerdier brains tend to problem-solve and approach things differently then "norms." — Chris Hardwick

Flattery is a challenge. The proper turning away from it, undercutting, diminishing it without offense or vehemence, is a social grace sweeter even than the swift determination to keep ahead in the race of hospitality. — Elizabeth Hardwick

The torment of personal relations. Nothing new there except in the disguise, and in the escape on the wings of adjectives. Sweet to be pierced by daggers at the end of paragraphs. — Elizabeth Hardwick

If you're going into stand-up, you're hyper-analyzing the world and asking as many questions about a thing as you possibly can so you can figure out the ultimate nature of that thing. — Chris Hardwick

I've been out of work so many times in my life that relying too much on just one job is terrifying. — Chris Hardwick

Twitter is basically text messaging. Twitter is a guy you can always elbow in the side and say, "Hey, look, a guy in a clown suit just threw up!" And I don't have 400-800 words to say about that, I just wanted to say that one thing. — Chris Hardwick

Steal moments of happiness if you have to, and then collect them until they are the dominant images in your psyche. — Chris Hardwick

When I was younger, my parents used to say, "Trust us on this. We have more experience than you." And I was like, "Shut up, you don't know anything!" But I was an idiot. They did know more stuff because they'd experienced more things. — Chris Hardwick

Mothers born on relief have their babies on relief. Nothingness, truly, seems to be the condition of these New York people. They are nomads going from one rooming house to another, looking for a toilet that functions. — Elizabeth Hardwick

Mainstream culture is like your mom: It's always a little late to catch on and gets easily confused by technology, but it means well. — Chris Hardwick

You walk into a strip club with a wad of cash; they all flock around you. Strippers are just pigeons with tits. They go where the bread is. — Chris Hardwick

The thing about hipsters is that they take very seriously trying to make themselves look like they don't take themselves seriously. — Chris Hardwick

For me personally, I have a fear of, 'If I stop, I'm going to die.' If I stop doing the things that are enriching to me or creatively exciting to me or if I stop creating, then I feel stagnant. If something isn't growing, it's dying. — Chris Hardwick

The greatest gift is a passion for reading. — Elizabeth Hardwick

The nerdist movement is less about consumers; there is a large contingent that are creative nerdists instead of consumers. — Chris Hardwick

There are certain parts of a classic nerd's brain that can destroy that person - obsessing about things to the detriment of everything else in your life. But those are the same tools that you can use to turn everything around. — Chris Hardwick

Bowling is all physics and energy distribution. It's F = ma. So it is actually one of the most science-y sports, because it literally is just a ball and a surface and objects to knock down. — Chris Hardwick

In those years I did not care to enjoy sex, only to have it. That is what seeing Alex again on Fifth Avenue brought back to me - a youth of fascinated, passionless copulation. There they are, figures in a discoloured blur, young men and not so young, the nice ones with automobiles, the dull ones full of suspicions and stinginess. By asking a thousand questions of many heavy souls, I did not learn much. You receive biographies interesting mainly for their coherence. So many are children who from the day of their birth are growing up to be their parents. Look at the voting records, inherited like flat feet. — Elizabeth Hardwick

How certain human beings are able to create works of art is a mystery, and why they should wish to do so, at a great cost to themselves usually, is another mystery. Works are not created by one's life; every life is rich in material. — Elizabeth Hardwick

For podcasters, people are just being themselves in a public fashion. So when someone is attacking a podcast, they're really attacking the person, because the person is the podcast. So I think that's why podcasters take it to heart. It's a very personal form of media, probably the most personal form of media. — Chris Hardwick

I was able to come up with a couple articles for the magazine, I was able to solicit help from a bunch of my friends to contribute pieces: Patton Oswalt, Seth Green, Emo Phillips, Chris Hardwick, John Hodgman, and more. It's very much a "Weird Al" themed issue, so I'd like to think that there's a lot of "Weird Al" flavor throughout but I think it'd be generous really to call me an editor. — Al Yankovic

Making a living is nothing; the great difficulty is making a point, making a difference - with words. — Elizabeth Hardwick

Alcohol is like pouring smiles on your brain. — Chris Hardwick

-and he flew in to her from the clutter of Somerville, the compost heap behind the Harvard Yard. — Elizabeth Hardwick

Many people believe letters the most personal and revealing form of communication. In them, we expect to find the charmer at his nap, slumped, open-mouthed, profoundly himself without thought for appearances. Yet, this is not quite true. Letters are above all useful as a means of expressing the ideal self; and no other method of communication is quite so good for this purpose. In conversation, those uneasy eyes upon you, those lips ready with an emendation before you have begun to speak, are a powerful deterrent to unreality, even to hope. — Elizabeth Hardwick

Fleetwood Mac is just one of my all-time favorite bands. — Chris Hardwick

She blinked away memories to find him staring at her with a mix of concern and horror on his face.

Chloe shivered. 'Why do you look at me like that?'

'Because you scare the hell out of me.'

She rather liked the sound of that. — Deb Marlowe

I played tournament chess from fifth grade up into high school. — Chris Hardwick

I feel like being nerd is not about the superficial quality; it's about how nerds approach life. It's much more emotional and mental than it is you're some fat guy living in your mom's basement, which I think is just a hacky stereotype. — Chris Hardwick

The famous carry about with them a great weight of patriarchal baggage-the footnotes of their lives. — Elizabeth Hardwick

Now, my novel begins. No, now I begin my novel - and yet I cannot decide whether to call myself I or she. — Elizabeth Hardwick

Steve Martin said that philosophy is good for comedy because it screws up your thinking just enough, and I agree with that. Being forced to see life's metadata is good training for looking for interesting angles on a topic. — Chris Hardwick

I think people have this stereotypical idea in their head of what a nerd is. People have said to me before, "You're not a nerd!" because I think they think of the classic Revenge Of The Nerds archetype. — Chris Hardwick

I do seem like the kind of guy who'd be obsessive about Rubik's Cubes. — Chris Hardwick

If you do a joke that's really old, then what happens is people on Reddit and Twitter just go, 'Real original, you're just doing old jokes!' But bands do it all the time. — Chris Hardwick

I have opinions about the differences between Memphis barbecue and Texas barbecue. Put me in the kitchen and you'll see how Southern I can be. — Chris Hardwick

Both my parents recognized early on that I wanted to do something in comedy, and they were really supportive. They're the ones who bought me Steve Martin records and let me watch R-rated comedies long before they probably should have. — Chris Hardwick

I dated around some, but I've always been a serial monogamist. I don't know how people date around a lot, and not want to stab themselves in the face with a sharp object. — Chris Hardwick

I would say that nerds, as a rule, are much more sexually active than the average person. There's a lot of anxiety and stress in the nerd brain, so sex is good for that. — Chris Hardwick

The way the recession has affected Hollywood, a lot of actors that had robust opportunities before in film no longer have such plum options, so cable has done a good job of becoming a happy medium for artists deemed film actors. — Omari Hardwick

My priorities are leaning more towards family, and I credit my southern upbringing to that. I was raised in the church as well, and God plays a big role in my upbringing and my life. — Omari Hardwick

Like lycanthropy, the nerd gene can skip a generation. My maternal grandfather was a technophile. — Chris Hardwick

Harvard (across the river in Cambridge) and Boston are two ends of one mustache ... Without the faculty, the visitors, the events that Harvard brings to the life here, Boston would be intolerable to anyone except genealogists, antique dealers, and those who find repletion in a closed local society. — Elizabeth Hardwick

Sober strip clubs are horrible. When you are sober you see the matrix code behind a strip club. You're paying girls to pretend to like you until you run out of money so they can walk away. — Chris Hardwick

I love the South. Although I grew up primarily in Memphis, my family moved around a ton when I was a kid. I guess I never stayed in one place long enough to pick up the accent, but I definitely identify as a Southerner. — Chris Hardwick

I probably get one or two days off every five or six weeks. — Chris Hardwick

When you don't take an aggressive role in shaping your thoughts, feelings, and perceptions, you become a helpless passenger floating through the universe like a ghost ship, merely reacting to wherever it takes you. — Chris Hardwick

Leonard Woolf's endurance of Virginia's famous frigidity is, we must suppose after the fact, altogether to his credit. Their honeymoon did not bring the amelioration they had hoped for and it is incredibly innocent and moving to think of them discussing it with Vanessa. They wanted to know when she had first had an orgasm. She said she couldn't remember but she knew she had been "sympathetic" from the age of two. Vita Sackville-West said about Virginia, "She dislikes the possessiveness and love of domination in men. In fact she dislikes the quality of masculinity. — Elizabeth Hardwick

I learned not to confuse 'busy' with 'productive,' but I'm still far too addicted to email to resist its early-morning digital snuggles. — Chris Hardwick

I do find some of the meanest, most exclusionary people are the nerds. And they rebel against other nerds! What are you doing? As much as I love nerds and the nerd movement, the nerd-on-nerd violence is really bad. A lot of times, nerds are the meanest ones online. And also, the trolling can be very extensive because they're smart. — Chris Hardwick

The private and serious drama of guilt is not often a useful one for fiction today and its disappearance, following perhaps the disappearance from life, appears as a natural, almost unnoticed relief, like some of the challenging illnesses wiped out by drug and vaccines. — Elizabeth Hardwick

I hate to say it, but because of humanity's capitalistic nature, money is important. — Chris Hardwick

They had created themselves together, and they always saw themselves, their youth, their love, their lost youth and lost love, their failures and memories, as a sort of living fiction. — Elizabeth Hardwick

The goal of almost every comic is to find a comedy voice - a specific point of view that an audience can latch onto. — Chris Hardwick

Here in the city the worst thing that can happen to a nation has happened: we are a people afraid of its youth. — Elizabeth Hardwick

For me, I'm always looking for the opportunity for a character that challenges me and lets me play two for the price of one. — Omari Hardwick

Farewell to Kentucky and our agreeable vices. We go to bed early, but because of whiskey seldom with a clear head. We are fond of string beans and thin slices of salty ham. When I left home my brother said: It will be wonderful if you make a success of life, then you can follow the races. Farewell — Elizabeth Hardwick

Don't tell television, but there is some superior programming being made on the Interwebz. — Chris Hardwick

I have come to the belief that there is not merely an accidental relationship between bad writing and routine sociological research, but a wonderfully pure, integral relationship; the awkwardness is necessary and inevitable. — Elizabeth Hardwick

The greatest gift is the passion for reading.
It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites,
it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind.
It is a moral illumination. — Elizabeth Hardwick

The reason why people don't get called back to sequels is because they did badly in the original [movie]. — Omari Hardwick

In the long run wives are to be paid in a peculiar coin - consideration for their feelings. As it usually turns out this is an enormous, unthinkable inflation few men will remit, or if they will, only with a sense of being overcharged. — Elizabeth Hardwick

Sometimes one has the feeling of an almost supernatural character to the shifts and changes in our national mood. They appear beyond the prose of cause and effect ... — Elizabeth Hardwick

No matter what tricks you use or what decisions you make, go easy on yourself as someone who's on a never-ending quest for improvement. — Chris Hardwick

Nature should have been pleased to have made this age miserable, without making it also ridiculous. — Elizabeth Hardwick

When I was in grade school I was into chess club, Latin club, D&D, computer camp - everything that made vaginas go away. — Chris Hardwick

What we have as artists is the immortalization opportunity that others don't have, because our work is lasting; it's there forever to view. — Omari Hardwick

Alas, the heart is not a metaphor, or at least not always a metaphor. — Elizabeth Hardwick

Reading is a discount ticket to everywhere. — Elizabeth Hardwick

I really don't have time "to Twitter," it's not something that should grab your day. That's a big misconception, actually, about the whole service. You don't go out of your way to tweet, you just post when you've got something. Hopefully, not while you're driving. It complements your life more than takes over your life. — Chris Hardwick

Just as someone who's been interested in radio and programming for so long, I can usually tell when an interviewer is doing a segment just to fill a programming slot. They ask questions, but they don't care about the answers. — Chris Hardwick

What's more unnerving than magnetism, ghosts, and unpurified water? Gadgetmongers who purport to protect us from metaphysical monsters that go bump in the New Age night. — Chris Hardwick

I do lots of crowd work in my set, because I enjoy writing material through riffing and conversation. — Chris Hardwick

I like listening to people talk about things that they love. They get to express things they don't normally get to express. — Chris Hardwick

Freelancers are 'free' because they take risks - they don't like being told what to do. That's both exciting and daunting, because you have to police you. — Chris Hardwick

Boston - wrinkled, spindly-legged, depleted of nearly all her spiritual and cutaneous oils, provincial, self-esteeming - has gone on spending and spending her inflated bills of pure reputation, decade after decade. — Elizabeth Hardwick

Trying to make strangers laugh is crazy and more than a little narcissistic. — Chris Hardwick

Stand up straight. If you stand up straight, you will instantly feel better about yourself, and you will project a better image to the world, one that says you don't feel like you have to be hunched over and closed off. — Chris Hardwick

People LOVE giving bad news. They love it. This is because negative information GREATLY empowers the giver and makes them feel important. — Chris Hardwick

His kiss burned hotter, coaxed harder than it had done earlier and she responded in kind. Her arms crept higher. Up and up again, she allowed her fingers to wander, over the broad expanse of his chest and along the strong and solid column of his neck. She fulfilled the fantasies of a thousand nights when she slid her fingers home - into the thick, silken strands of his hair. — Deb Marlowe

I've gone from being bullied by jocks as a kid to being bullied by nerds as an adult. — Chris Hardwick

Twitter is really a hyper-distilled version of how the internet should work - short bursts of relatively useful information. — Chris Hardwick

We're gonna have fun, god***it! — Chris Hardwick

All television is an advertisement - that's why it exists. It wasn't the art-form first and then the commerce - it was that they could put on entertainment long enough to distract people into looking at products. It's for focusing people on advertising and separating you from money in some way. Some people forget that. The side product is that we get some great eye candy. TV is the best it has ever been right now. I don't have a problem with that since it's what keep us employed. — Chris Hardwick

Growing up in the 70s and 80s, it took effort to be a nerd. You had to seek out the nerd stuff. — Chris Hardwick

All of her news was bad and so her talk was punctuated with "of course" and "naturally. — Elizabeth Hardwick

Do you think Patrick Swayze now goes up behind people in pottery classes and hugs them just to crack up other ghosts? — Chris Hardwick

A big company is like trying to steer a luxury liner. — Chris Hardwick

In art it is not often possible to make direct use of your dreams of tomorrow and your excuses for yesterday. — Elizabeth Hardwick

I don't know if I'm a Twitter addict. That seems kind of harsh. I would say it's more that I'm seriously involved. That it's a long-term relationship - like a girlfriend, which my actual girlfriend loves to hear. — Chris Hardwick

We are in niche consumption mode, but 'niche' doesn't mean 'small' anymore. Niche can mean focused, and particularly with the Web, which is a global audience ... you can have something niche and still get 10 to 15 million views. — Chris Hardwick

If reality shows are so popular, that means their viewers are screaming for more realness. — Omari Hardwick

It is June. This is what I have decided to do with my life just now. I will do this work and lead this life, the one I am leading today. Each morning the blue clock and the crocheted bedspread, the table with the Phone, the books and magazines, the Times at the door. — Elizabeth Hardwick

Some people learn comedy, and some people just are comedy. — Chris Hardwick

No human ever became interesting by not failing. The more you fail and recover and improve, the better you are as a person. Ever meet someone who's ALWAYS had EVERYTHING work out for them with ZERO struggle? They usually have the depth of a puddle. Or they don't exist. — Chris Hardwick

In this couple defects were multiplied, as if by a dangerous doubling; weakness fed upon itself without a counterstrength and they were trapped, defaults, mutually committed, left holes everywhere in their lives. When you read their letters to each other it is often necessary to consult the signature in order to be sure which one has done the writing. Their tone about themselves, their mood, is the fatal one of nostalgia
a passive, consuming, repetitive poetry. Sometimes one feels even its most felicitious and melodious moments are fixed, rigid in experession, and that their feelings have gradually merged with their manner, fallen under the domination of style. Even in their suffering, so deep and beyond relief, their tonal memory controls the words, shaping them into the Fitzgerald tune, always so regretful, regressive, and touched with a careful felicity. — Elizabeth Hardwick

The lifeblood of YouTube is sharing. — Chris Hardwick

The great is seldom a deterrent to the mediocre — Elizabeth Hardwick

Letters are above all useful as a means of expressing the ideal self; and no other method of communication is quite so good for this purpose. In letters we can reform without practice, beg without humiliation, snip and shape embarrassing experiences to the measure of our own desires ... — Elizabeth Hardwick

As a comedy nerd, I get a lot out of the podcast because I'm genuinely interested in the people I'm talking to. — Chris Hardwick