game show producer & host (1929-2017)
Tough love? That's bullshit. You love your kid and you keep on loving your kid. You take your kid back no matter what, and you keep on taking your kid back. Once, twice, a hundred times. The tough-love philosophy tells you to give your kid a million bucks and say, Don't come home until you're clean. Well, I did that. I gave my daughter a million bucks. She never got clean, and she never came home. She died.
CHUCK BARRIS
Esquire, Jan. 2003
Helplessness is such a rotten feeling. There's nothing you can do about it. Being helpless is like being paralyzed. It's sickness. The cure calls for a monumental effort to stand up and start walking somewhere, anywhere. But that takes some doing.
CHUCK BARRIS
You and Me
The Gong Show was the greatest scam of all time. It was simple: We wanted to do a talent show. There weren't any venues for acts back then. We were gonna have a show of new, fresh, good acts. But we couldn't find any; they were all lousy. So rather than throw away the idea, I said, "Let's reverse it. Let's do lousy acts." Now, is that a scam? I'm telling you.
CHUCK BARRIS
Esquire, Jan. 2003
I think if you're ahead of your time, you've failed. I think if you're behind the times, you've failed. I think the only way to measure success is being right on time with what people want.
CHUCK BARRIS
interview, AV Club, May 28, 2003
When you are young, your potential is infinite. You might do anything, really. You might be Einstein. You might be DiMaggio. Then you get to an age where what you might be gives way to what you have been. You weren't Einstein. You weren't anything. That's a bad moment.
CHUCK BARRIS
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
Fifty percent of something is better than than one hundred percent of nothing.
CHUCK BARRIS
You and Me
How can you not have any regrets? It's impossible. No regrets? Bullshit. I don't believe anybody who tells me that.
CHUCK BARRIS
Esquire, Jan. 2003
It was June 1980. I was standing in front of a full-length mirror studying my body. What I saw didn't please me. My face was full of deep wrinkles and lines, while the top of my forehead sported hairless patches of skin; vacant and deathly white chunks of scalp that, I realized with a certain amount of terror, could no longer be camouflaged by deft parting and combing. It was very depressing.
CHUCK BARRIS
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
If you stick in the business of being creative, you get hurt. And creative disappointment seems so much harder to take than any other kind. But if you're not prepared to get hurt like that, life can be pretty boring. I think I'm going to keep on going.
CHUCK BARRIS
The Guardian, Mar. 3, 2003
One piece of pie is delicious. Fourteen pieces are obviously nauseating.
CHUCK BARRIS
attributed, TV Tropes
Well, I don't particularly like game shows. I mean, I think I did them well. I could do them, but it didn't mean I really liked them. I never watched any of the game shows that were on television at the time, like The Price Is Right, To Tell The Truth, all those shows. I think that also probably gave me an edge, because I never really copied much of what they did. I liked my shows--they made me laugh--but I didn't like anybody else's.
CHUCK BARRIS
interview, AV Club, May 28, 2003
One day you wake up and you're old as shit.
CHUCK BARRIS
Esquire, Jan. 2003
The Gong Show provided me with five years of the happiest times of my life, but that's that. And to be known as the guy who gave the world The Gong Show -- listen, my Uncle George isn't known as anything. So I guess it isn't so bad in that context.
CHUCK BARRIS
The Florida Times-Union, June 3, 2009
I was always kind of a second-level jack-of-all-trades, and unfortunately not a master of any of them.
CHUCK BARRIS
interview, AV Club, May 28, 2003
The fun kind of ran out of television in the 1980s, and I dabbled around for a couple of years before finally selling the company so I could pretend I was Fitzgerald and Hemingway and go write on the Riviera. I was lucky enough to make enough money to live happily ever after, so I took off. You know, I probably should have never quit my day job. The books I wrote in Europe, I couldn't even get them published. I think I wrote two manuscripts, and neither one was published. Well, one was, but it wasn't that good.
CHUCK BARRIS
interview, AV Club, May 28, 2003
I came up with a new game-show idea recently. It's called The Old Game. You got three old guys with loaded guns onstage. They look back at their lives, see who they were, what they accomplished, how close they came to realizing their dreams. The winner is the one who doesn't blow his brains out. He gets a refrigerator.
CHUCK BARRIS
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
God's camera takes snapshots that don't fall into your hand like Polaroids do. They pop right into your head and stay there forever.
CHUCK BARRIS
Della: A Memoir of My Daughter
I always admired and envied kids who did, who definitely wanted to be a doctor or who were going to go to West Point because their father was in the war, or if somebody wanted to fly, that that was something they definitely wanted to do. I thought that was great, because I didn't have any big desires or great ambitions for anything.
CHUCK BARRIS
interview, AV Club, May 28, 2003