YouSaid · the spoken record

Norman Lear

lines on the record: 40
first: 2017-12-27
most recent: 2017-12-27
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“When I was 88, 89. People didn't pay the kind of attention they paid to me when I crossed 90. I could get up. When I get up here, I might get a hand. Just for getting up. I cross a room, it's an ovation. Really?”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I gotta be careful that I have an answer to every question. Because that would make me sound wise. And wisdom is supposed to go with age, you know.”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The biggest obstacle to peace is a lack of understanding. It's crazy, but it's been so easy to sit here. Have this conversation with you. And the hardest thing for people is to communicate. And countries to communicate and neighborhoods and neighbors. And that's basically when we talk about. Leadership Conversation. Well, it's all the same thing is that we need the conversation.”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the way I put it usually, and I sing so long, I will say it to you because I always do, to be continued. Which I recognize at 62 is even more important at 93.”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, absolutely. I mean, I've just learned that I'm 31 years older than you. Can't believe that. I don't, I'm not older than 62.”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think of myself as the peer of whoever I'm talking to. If I was sitting here talking to a 12-year-old, I'd be 12. That's the way I would”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I have written maybe four or five presidents, the same letter. And most of the time I've said, you know, you're far younger than I am. And I'm a sophisticated man who has done well in our culture. And I need a father in the office of the president. I need a father. It doesn't matter your age. Be a father to us. Help us understand our common humanity And that's why my bumper stagger eats just another end of the film. Because that's where it all starts with that understanding”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It needs healing desperately needs healing. And understanding, we don't have real conversations. You know, I mean, We don't have conversations about race, really.”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that suggests to me not to do away with religion, people who require it, needed it, nurtures, it saves. Let it be one on one. Don't bring it into the public. Take in the pew, in the family, around the dinner table. But out there, all religions are that body of water running in that thousand mile river. Put it there.”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, because my friend Martin Marty is a great theologian at University of Chicago. For a great many years, and I was walking with him in Vermont one day, and I asked him, Marty, what is the shortest description of worship you can give me? He said, one word, Norman. Gratitude. Worship is gratitude.”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As a result of the climate changing, the vegetation changes. But the water that nurtures it all, the spiritual water. Nourishes everything. So that's the way I feel about the life of the Spirit.”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the deepest one, I think the most important one is the one into oneself. And I'm still at it. So because I don't really know I grope, because though I'm Jewish, I never had been a temple member or a religious person. As deeply spiritual as I feel. Another metaphor I love is a thousand mile river along a thousand miles of river. The climate changes.”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's the way we fell in love with our total conversation for the first couple of years of our... Relationship You know, I'm still searching the We're on true journeys.”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a moral code and truth. And she was deep and deep into it. It had saved her in a sense. And we talked about that. And it was the first time I'd ever been invited or encouraged. And as we were falling in love, we were falling in love in this conversation.”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She was the first person in my life that because she was reading a book called The Urancha Book, which was very dear to her. Not a religion, but a spiritual book.”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think it's true because Muhad was a liberal who was flexibly liberal. And I'm that person. I think of myself as a conservative because you will not mess with my First Amendment, my guarantees of religious and social justice. Everyone equal under the law, I think that's a very conservative way of thinking. But does my heart bleed for people who need that I can help? And that the country can help, and the government can help, and so forth. Yes. So I think of myself as a bleeding heart conservative. And I just think it's all common sense We have versions of each other, and that's what the Bible tells us. Aren't we supposed to help each other take care of each other, love thy neighbor? It's all at the essence”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because I wanted somebody shorter than Archie, smaller than Archie, who could let him have it closer to the ground from the ground. In his face. Gaining a few days or a week of longevity just thinking about those two guys together.”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is interesting. I didn't have the actor in mind. And then I thought of, or somebody reminded me of Sherman Hemsley in Pearlie. Musical. I had seen that. Yes. Oh my, that is the guy.”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But the idea, and it was Jennet Dubois, who Wrote the lyric to moving on and out. The idea of moving on up came out of that visa. We were going to do the Jeffersons, but let's make”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh no, not at all. Not at all. It doesn't mean I had to be right, but did I think so? JJ's I thought about this a lot through the years. JJ's dynamite is as good an example of American excess, and I think about this all the time, as any I know. I didn't think shows should be on for nine years. There's some excess in that. Today, as you and I talk, excess in America, I think is our biggest product. It's our greatest product. So had he not the opportunity to say dynamite as often as he had the opportunity? I don't think Esther would have felt what she felt and anybody else who thought he was. Overdo”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look at the weight they were carrying, they were representing the first African American mother and father, parents with their children. On television. Yeah. And I don't think he had to be all that smarter or sensitive to realize that was a lot of weight.”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm not sure I knew ahead of time, but as it was happening, the same thing with... On good times with John Amos. Yes, and Esther Roll.”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because we always ask ourselves, what would Jesus do? That Jesus, we understand from everything we read and hear. Not the way people perform.”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Those were the days. But Archie Bunker was a fearful man, and he was a fool because he knew so little. But there's a reason Edith Bunker loved him.”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Miserable because he couldn't deal with progress. Progress included a black family move next door. He was a prey to tomorrow, and that started with the opening song.”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, well, because he was carrying a lot of weight. He was saying this is an American bigot. And I would tell them all the time, but I don't think abu”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you What happened with him was he fought the character up to a certain point being Tuesday or Wednesday or we're going to tape the show on Friday. And he slipped into the character. And when Carol O'Carter became Archie Bunker, and for a couple of days rehearsed in the character, nobody could write as funny as he. Then Archie Bunker was alive, and he would take the lines that we had written and turn them into Archie Bunker's.”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We didn't share the same sense of humor. And when I say we, it's global we, I'm talking about. The writers generally. So we were asking him to do things he didn't think And we had”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But it came out of caring and paying attention. I had asked the writers to read a couple of newspapers a day and pay a lot of attention to their neighborhoods and their families and their kids and their mates and so forth. So we came in, it's a perfect example, a writer came in one day and said, have you guys seen this? And it was an article about hypertension in black males. Being excessive much more than whites. And that's a great story for the Jeffersons. So we wrote that story. The show aired, and there were tens of thousands of phone calls to local stations across the country that carried the show from African American families that wanted to know more about hypertension.”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you get the same sparks from conflicting ideas. And between parents and children and kids and kids, there's a lot of conflict. That's where the comedy comes from.”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, I know. I mean, I never had a question about it. It was the establishment that had the question as they continue to have the question. The two things I used to hear all the time was it won't fly in the Bible belt and it won't fly in Des Moines.”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that too came Oprah as a result of being a kid of the Depression. And the best thing the seniors in my family, my grandparents and their friends and my chantis and uncles and Somebody happened to be making a buck and able to support his family. He was a good provider. That phrase a good provider has lived with me forever.”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My mother was selling the furniture because she couldn't live in this place and the shame she felt. A host of people were over the house and they were buying things and some fool, I wanted to say something worse. Was buying my father's red leather chair, which had great meaning for me. We used to listen to football games together. In that red leather chair, and a grown man puts his hand on my shoulder and says, Well, you're the man of the house now. And the next thing he says is they're there, man in the house doesn't cry Somehow deep inside, I think that was the moment I realized the foolishness of a human condition, that in any situation there is humor. You look into the place of a nine year old at that time in his life and you tell him he's the man of the house. Come on.”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maya was, I wasn't yet the four or four years I spent with them, my grandmother was most important person in my life. And I learned a lot from her. The expression go no was my grandmother. If she came in and told her that the Yankees had just won the World Series, she didn't know anything about baseball. She'd say, oh, no. But in that smile was an understanding of life and the world and that other people know a lot of things that she didn't know. And a deep understanding of the foolishness of the human condition. I started to tell you the foolishness of the human condition occurred to me the night my father had been taken to prison.”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And if there's anything more spiritual in our life than an audience moving on a belly laugh, I mean, that's praying, that's gratitude, that's enjoyment.”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I believe my longevity has depended a great deal on the amount of laughter I've had in my life. You know, I love thinking about this. I could cry thinking about this. You stand behind an audience as I did time and again. When Archie Bunker was at his funniest, let's say. When an audience laughs together, every seat side by side, they tend to come up and out of their chairs a little and down and then back up again.”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People used to say with so many shows, how stressful is that? And I would say, well, there is stress and then there is joyful stress.”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, because I had a rehearsal to go to. At the next. The next show. Yeah, the next. You had the next. There was always the next.”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the unifying thread is, you know, there were two little words in the English language that we don't recognize as important as they are for me. And they are over and next. When something is over, it's over, over. And we're on to next. And if there was a hammock in the middle of those two words, That would be, I think, what the philosophers tell us is living in the moment, the hanger between over and next.”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I told myself actually 20 years ago or more that I was going to do it. I have six kids. They were asking me to please do it. And it took six years to actually the time I said, okay? I'm doing it. But I had a glorious staff for all those years who kept everything and everything I ever wrote down there. They had ready for me”
2017-12-27 · Oprah's Super Soul · Norman Lear: Lessons on Longevity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source