I’ve always liked to read about extremely wealthy people, especially when they are crazy (like Howard Hughes or Caligula.) While writing this book I did a lot of fun research on robber barons like Rockefeller and Morgan. But the most helpful stuff came from studying royal families and mad emperors. The best book I read was probably A King’s Own Story, which is the memoir of Edward VIII. Also, anything about Ivan the Terrible or Ted Turner.

Simon Rich

Categorized in : Fun Kings Crazy

"It's not just about Jen," he said. "It's about the entire romantic system. Ninety-nine percent of men are in love with the top one percent of women. And yet they often refuse to date us. It's a complete injustice.

Simon Rich

ninety-nine love men

There are actual monsters in the world, but when my kids ask I pretend like there aren’t.

Simon Rich

monsters kids world

I never felt ostracized or made to feel strange by obsessing over The Onion or Calvin and Hobbes. That was considered completely normal.

Simon Rich

onions normal strange

I admired the earnestness of these people, many of whom had joined Greenpeace and marched for noble things in their youth. But I didn’t share their hatred of the establishment. After all, the establishment had given me so many of my favorite things: Nick at Nite, the New York Knicks, Stephen King, Taco Bell, Green Day. The list went on and on.

Simon Rich

kings new-york people

I wanted to be an artist after all, and my teachers told me these were the best authors the 20th century had to offer. But these books sucked. They were so boring and sloppy and plotless. And Bob Dylan's lyrics seemed nonsensical to me - almost like he had just gotten high and written down whatever random thoughts occurred to him.

Simon Rich

artist teacher book

It's easier to be a grownup than to be a kid. When you're a kid, you lie constantly and people are always calling you on it. And when you're a grownup, you lie constantly and people rarely do. Children are constantly being caught. Adults rarely so. Being an adult, you also get a free pass, which means you have to actively be a good person because nobody's around to tell you to do that. Even evil kids will be good when adults are watching. But once you're an adult, no one is. As a grownup, you've got an agency over your own life, which hopefully you use for the greater good and not evil.

Simon Rich

mean lying children

People are funny in like young adulthood, just like how people's musical tastes are cool, but it changes very rapidly. In five or ten years, I'll probably still be confident about what's funny but it probably won't be funny anymore.

Simon Rich

musical like-you people

I read a ton of nonfiction. I tend to read about a lot of very extreme situations, life-or-death situations. I'm very interested in books about Arctic exploration or about doomed Apollo missions. I tend to read a lot of nonfiction that's sort of hyperbolic and visceral. And then I kind of draw on my own personal experiences and my own sort of generic life experience, and I kind of try to feed my day-to-day reality that I have with sort of high stakes reference points that I read about. They're things everyone can relate to.

Simon Rich

trying book reality

I was never a cool person; in fact, cool people have always made fun of me. That’s why I loved [the Robert Cormier YA novel] The Chocolate War - because the cool kids (not the establishment) were the villains. I totally identified with that.

Simon Rich

fun war kids

By the time I got to college I had stopped reading books because I wanted to "be cool" and started reading books simply because I wanted to read them. I discovered heroes like Roth, King, Dahl, Shirley Jackson, Patricia Highsmith, TC Boyle, Douglas Adams, Neil Gaiman, David Sedaris. These people weren't trying to "rebel against the literary establishment." They were trying to write great, high-quality books that were as entertaining and moving as possible.

Simon Rich

kings book moving

I never really liked "cool" books. I plowed through as much Borges and Joyce as possible, read the first half of V. and spent whole Bar Mitzvah checks on Beat poetry.

Simon Rich

mitzvah bars book

I’m too young and ridiculous a person to speak for my generation, but I’d be happy to talk about my own experiences as a generation Y writer. I was raised by a generation of hippies. Throughout my childhood, teachers urged me to fight the establishment. My English teacher assigned Ginsberg and Kerouac and declared Bob Dylan “a genius.” My science teacher told me that television was “the new opiate of the masses” and bragged about never having owned one. My drama teacher made us perform Beckett.

Simon Rich

hippie teacher drama

The Last Girlfriend on Earth. it is supernatural and absurd, but I like to think that when it comes to the character's emotional journey, it's very honest.

Simon Rich

company-news

My job as a showrunner was to figure out new ways to torture Jay every week, we set him on fire, we cut off his limbs, we poisoned him repeatedly, we electrocuted genitals - we're constantly subjecting him to tortures but he never once complained.

Simon Rich

company-news

I've been amazed at the network's bravery and the amount of creative freedom they give their showrunners, i had a chance to make the show that I wanted and they have never once censored a single premise.

Simon Rich

company-news

I try not to write jokes that are mean. I try my best to write jokes that are pretty universal and jokes that don't attack anyone. I know I often fall short of that and end up taking unfair swipes at people, but I try not to.

Simon Rich

end best people fall

At the end of the day I'm writing comedy. If you get too realistic as a comedy writer with your disasters, it stops being funny.

Simon Rich

end-of-the-day day you funny

Most of my work is, I get an idea, and, with the help of Wikipedia, I can write. I don't have to leave my apartment.

Simon Rich

help leave i-can work

I read the Bible when I was 12 while studying for my bar mitzvah. I was also reading a lot of Dilbert comics at the time, and I guess the two kind of got fused in my mind. I've always imagined God as an irrational, distractible boss. It's my best explanation for our planet.

Simon Rich

best god bible time