Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live as Told by Its Stars, Writers, and Guests

by Tom Shales

The hip thing to do in those days was to go to the desert and eat hallucinogenic mushrooms.

And so one lives with this kind of dualism, this disparity between the marvelous magic of becoming accepted by so many so fast and, at the same time, a lingering sense that one doesn’t deserve it and sooner or later will be found out.

I didn’t like coke. I tried it for one week and I just got diarrhea.

I think one of the reasons Saturday Night Live has been so successful is that it’s almost brutally unsentimental about its past.

“I’m glad I’m not near the window; I would jump out right now.”

Very often the least talented people are the very first to declare undying loyalty. Because the other people have more choices.

An executive with delusions of creativity, like a wounded pig, is a dangerous animal.

Fortunately everyone I work with is such a narcissist, they don’t have time to worry about what other people are doing.

I don’t get nervous because it’s Saturday Night Live. I get excited because it’s Saturday Night Live.

it comes together now and then to remember, to celebrate, to mourn—and, no matter how solemn the occasion, to laugh.

It’s a choice: Either you try to make it look easy or you emphasize how hard it is.

Right around the world. And every hotel that I stayed in, I turn on the TV and there was SNL.

I really didn’t enjoy having Justin Bieber around. I didn’t hate the guy, I just wasn’t into it. I’m pitching jokes to this kid?

that people who work together all week would have to hug each other at the end of each show on Saturdays—but there is something very real about needing to have to check in with everybody after everything you’ve gone through the rest of the week.

Each generation—to borrow a famous quote from another realm of life—each generation gets the SNL it deserves.