Viewers Are Geniuses/Quotes

""Yes, to understand this joke you need to know relativity and image processing theory. No, I am unrepentant.""

- David Morgan-Mar on this Irregular Webcomic strip

""We've got a great show for you today. ... But first, I've got a bone to pick with you all, my fellow public radio listeners. NPR News recently did a survey of their listeners' favorite beach reading. Y'know, lighter fare for summertime, mindless stuff. Among the finalists submitted by NPR listeners: The Brothers Karamazov and that perennial guilty pleasure, War and Peace. Now look, you're my peeps, and nobody else is listening: c'mon guys! Haven't we had enough sand kicked in our faces? I thought we agreed to keep this quiet! Remember, anybody asks, you love Danielle Steele, and please cover up your copy of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Practical Reason with the Us Weekly we gave you. Okay?""

- Peter Sagel, Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me!

""The most dangerous man, to any government, is a man who's able to think things through for himself, without regard for prevailing superstitions and taboos. Without exception, he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is immoral, incompetent and corrupt, and if he's a romantic personally he will try to change it. And even if he's not he is quick to spread discontent among those who are.""

- H. L. Mencken

""If you can't handle the complexity, I'm sorry you are stupid, because you are missing out.""

- Sean Howard, on The Wire

""Fuck the casual viewer. Seriously, who wants a casual viewer? If you’re a writer do you want a casual reader? I don’t want those people. Don’t want ‘em. Throwing them back. They’re like little fish on the hook. Throw ‘em back. I want the guy who’s come in who wants to be told a story. A story has a beginning, middle and an end.""

- David Simon, the creator of The Wire

""I accidentally bumped into a guy who was wearing a hat, had a ponytail, and had piercings in his eyebrows, nostrils, and lip. He tells me, 'Hey! You got a lot of nerve!' And I go, 'Hey! You got a...lot of... cranial accessories!' (crowd laughs) This is a smart crowd; I like smart crowds. When I get the dumb crowds I gotta go, 'Hey! You got a lot of shit on your head!'""

- Mitch Hedberg

"Never underestimate your audience. They're generally sensitive, intelligent people who respond positively to quality entertainment."

- Cameron Mitchell, Talking to a Script Writer, Stargate SG-1, episode 200

""When you were controlling the feeds, did you notice the parabolic? Hey, it's important. Parabolas are important. Here, look at this. In all the equations that describe motion and heat... in all the Feynman diagrams, what's the one variable that you can turn into negative and still get rational answers from?""

- Abe Terger, Primer. (If this made sense to you, your name has the letters "MSc" or "PhD" after it somewhere.)

""Why should things be easy to understand?""

- Thomas Pynchon

""Primer is a film for nerds, geeks, brainiacs, Academic Decathlon winners, programmers, philosophers and the kinds of people who have made it this far into the review.""

- Roger Ebert, reviewing "Primer"

""People have asked me why I made the first chapter of my first novel so long, and in an invented English. The only answer I can come up with that satisfies me is, to keep out the scum.""

- Alan Moore

"Troy: I think I got half of it...which got me through the half I didn't. Abed: Ah, like the first season of The Wire."

- Community