Paul Reiser Quotes

People often ask me, "What's the difference between couplehood and babyhood?" In a word? Moisture. Everything in my life is now more moist. Between your spittle, your diapers, your spit-up and drool, you got your baby food, your wipes, your formula, your leaky bottles, sweaty baby backs, and numerous other untraceable sources-all creating an ever-present moistness in my life, which heretofore was mainly dry.

But at the same time that the experience is pulling you apart, it's also bonding you. You have this joint venture! You both made this baby. And that's the thing I still can't get over

Field of Dreams is the only movie - and I saw it in the theater - on an afternoon when I was on location somewhere, and there were like 12 people in the theater. I was just so devastated; I couldn't get out of my seat. And I sat and watched it a second time.

The biggest thing I remember is that there was just no transition. You hit the ground diapering.

Three has always been tougher than Two. Think of any of your famous threesomes. The Three Stooges? Look at the anger there. My bet is that before Curly was born, Moe and Larry could play together for hours without even a single poke in the eye. Huey, Dewey, and Louie? Donald Duck never had a moment's peace. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly? I rest my case.

Having a baby dragged me, kicking and screaming, from the world of self-absorption.

The jewel in the baby product crown is the stroller. And if in America you are what you drive, then in Parentland, you are what you push.

There's something that happens in that delivery room, when a woman becomes ten times more a woman, and a guy becomes six times less a man. You feel really dopey and useless and like a spectator. I did, anyway.

In some cultures they don't name their babies right away. They wait until they see how the child develops. Like in Dances with Wolves. Unfortunately, our kids' names would be less romantic and poetic. "This is my oldest boy, Falls off His Tricycle, his friend, Dribbles His Juice, and my beautiful daughter, Allergic to Nuts.

And after you've done the acting, there's a lot of places you can put your input - in the editing, in the production of it, in the rewriting of it and so on

I'd distract myself until finally it was a combination of things. The show was over and I had time on my hands. I had taken time and played and just relaxed.

My wife would say my worst habit is that I'm not good at dropping subjects. If something bothers me, I'll bring it up endlessly and relentlessly. I think it's a search for clarity, but she uses different words.

I always loved comedy, but I never knew it was something you could learn to do. I always thought that some people are born comedians ... just like some people are born dentists.

But you get past that and realize you have to let go of what you think you want. There'll be plenty of time for that later. Right now, go and be with that baby. Just play with this beautiful little boy

My parenting style could be described as not good cop or bad cop so much as nervous cop. I'm always yelling for somebody to stop because they're about to get hurt. I'm the take a jacket, slow down guy.

If a tree falls on your head in a forest and no one hears it, it still hurts.

The best part of being married is... you don't have to explain a lot of things. Those wordless moments when you both know that what you witnessed together is funny, idiotic, or really sweet. Being connected is pretty miraculous.

A new child in the house is a huge tourist attraction. It's like Disneyland, except there the lines are longer and no one brings casseroles.

Marriage is just an elaborate game that allows two selfish people to periodically feel that they're not.

Peanut butter and lamb chops were not foods that had ever been a significant part of our life before pregnancy. In fact, my wife almost never ate either.So where did these craving come from? I concluded it's the baby, ordering in.

There was a period where our child's birth was getting really close, and we still had nothing. We were dangerously close to calling him Untitled Baby Project.

Sometimes it works out well, and certain household responsibilities fall naturally to those who like doing them. For example, my wife likes to pack suitcases, I like to unpack them. My wife likes to buy groceries, I like to put them away. I do. I like the handling and discovering, and the location assignments. Cans - over there. Fruit - over there. Bananas - not so fast. You go over here. When you learn not to go bad so quickly, then you can stay with the rest of your friends.

Just because a baby cries, I discovered, doesn't mean there's always something wrong. Sometimes babies wake up for no real reason. They just want to check if they're doing it right. "This is Sleeping, right?" "Exactly." "I just lie here?" "That's right." "Okay." Then back to sleep they go.

It turns out most of the conclusions that I've come to in life have equally valid contradictions. I think it's true you need to make a plan, set a goal and stick to it, but I would also advise: Don't keep your eyes so fixed on your goal that you miss what sneaks up to surprise you, because magic will come from unexpected places.

And in that time, I lost my dad and had kids of my own. It was like, OK, I get it now. I know what fatherhood is all about. And you look at your parents differently

Middle names are kind of like vice presidents: It's a fine distinction and certainly an honor, but you're never not aware that someone else got the real job.

So where did these cravings come from? I concluded it's the baby ordering in. Prenatal takeout. Even without ever being in a restaurant, fetuses develop remarkably discerning palates, and they are not shy about demanding what they want. If they get a hankering, they just pick up the umbilical cord and call. 'You know what would taste good right now? A cheeseburger, large fries, and a vanilla shake. And if you could, hurry it up, because I'm supposed to grow a lung in a half hour.'

The consumer mentality - we like something, what other flavor does it come in? We like that TV show, does it come in a book form? Does it come in a capsule? How about a soup?

The most rewarding part about being a dad is just looking at children who didn't exist at some point. The first time you saw them, they were the size of a quarter, in a sonogram, and now they can pour orange juice and yell at each other.

The most used appliance in our house is my 10-year-old son Leon's Xbox.

My wife and I never agree on the dishtowels. It's a matter of terms. She asks me not to put the dishtowel in the sink. So I drape it over the sink, but not in the sink. If that's our biggest problem, I think we're in good shape.

As you get older you realize your parents don't look so dumb - and that you're not as smart as you thought you were.

There's something very refreshing about being on stage.

Once in a while you get a moment of clarity - an inspiration - and they don't come that frequently.

When you get busy, the priorities change. In your twenties, you hang out with who you were in school with. Then you grow up and you hang out with the people you're playing ball with, things you like doing with. When you get married, it changes a bit and you lose some friends, or you gain other friends. You gain couple-y friends. It changes again when you have children, and then when your children are the focus of your life.

In traditional TV, it's very hard to have the luxury of banking all your scripts and getting everything in a row, but it does make it very easy, and it's very productive and beneficial and you learn as you're going.

You know what? The obvious is obvious for a reason.

It was trying to make my tennis game look mildly respectable, which I found you don't even really need to practice if you have a really good editor. They can edit it and you're like, "Hey, it looks like I'm playing really well." That was the fun part, but it was like going to summer camp.

They're not the sharpest people - babies. So, you must be everything to them.

From the minute we're born, boys and girls stare at each other, trying to figure out if they like what they see. Like parade lines, passing each other for mutual inspection. You march, you look. You march, you look. If you're interested, you stop and talk, and if it doesn't work out, you just get back in the parade. You keep marching, and you keep looking.

New parents always sound like hucksters in a pyramid scheme. Anyone who has kids and then gets you to go and have kids gets a check from Huckster Headquarters.

When you realize you would consider not having a child just so you could take an occasional snooze and be available to see Batman Retires the same weekend it comes out, you have to take a good hard look at yourself and acknowledge, I am a shallow, shallow person.

Younger kids, they understand that things aren't so perfect with their father or with their mother.

You know, the fact that every morning you get a script in your mailbox, that's going to stop. All these little pedestrian, mundane things. And the cash.

Over the years, there certainly have been plenty of ideas that I've had and given up on, but for this one, the only thing that was standing in its way was me doing it - I just had to write it... And then if it didn't happen, it didn't happen. But I didn't want it to be for lack of effort on my part, so I had hunch that it would be a good story and that we would work well together. And it certainly worked out that way.

People come up to us and ask how we knew so much about their own family... I'm talking about people from faraway places, too. I get people from Turkey and Chile coming up to me and saying I wrote about their family.

They don't see that whole pattern. Worm/death. Worm/death. I would catch on.

I'm not smart enough to write about something that didn't actually happen to me. But I couldn't write a space movie if you put a gun to my head.

I've come to realize that making it your life's work to be different than your parents is not only hard to do, it's a dumb idea. Not everything we found fault with was necessarily wrong; we were right, for example, to resent, as kids, being told when to go to bed. We'd be equally wrong, as parents, to let our kids stay up all night. To throw out all the tools of parenting just because our parents used them would be like making yourself speak English without using ten letters of the alphabet; it's hard to do.

We all hold on to some image of the family we want, based one way or another on the family we had. Lots of people are thrilled about the families they came from, others couldn't get away fast enough. Most people fall into that vast middle ground: great affection mixed with a few ideas for improvement. A couple of things they wish could have perhaps been done differently.