- Henry Beard, Himself: It was like we had an attic full of culture that had been accumulating from 1945 to 1970. And we opened the trap door and nobody had been up there. And we just basically looted it!
- Tony Hendra, Himself: Some people might think this is an egregious comparison; but, I would say that at my years at the Lampoon, um, were not unlike the Paris of the '20s that Hemingway describes in "A Moveable Feast". Wherever two or more Lampoon people got together, in those years, something explosive happened.
- Henry Beard, Himself: Its a time of dial telephones. There's no internet. There's no computers. There wasn't that much shared. But, what was shared was shared by everybody. They absolutely had everything in common and its, in a way, that will never happen again.
- Judd Apatow, Himself: Really what is important, I think, is just those people. They became - all of modern comedy.
- Kevin Bacon, Himself: Breasts. I would try to seek out the magazine on the off chance that there would be some breasts.
- John Landis, Himself: There's a time in everyone's life, and its really between 17 and 22, when you talk to people in their middle age, they always talk about their high school or their college experience as the quote unquote best years of their lives. And I'm thinkin' why? And *ultimately* its because when you're 17-18, you were expected to function as an adult , but you're a baby. Have you ever gone to a college campus? Those kids are babies; but, they're adults. So, there's this wonderful freedom, sense of adventure. We can do anything we want! We're college students! And that's really how the whole thing started.
- Sean Kelly, Himself: The Harvard Lampoon was one of those famous things that nobody has ever seen a copy of.
- Henry Beard, Himself: Doug Kenny and I decided to do a parody of "Lord of the Rings" and we send a letter to Tolkien who, honest to God, sent us a letter back saying, yeah, go right ahead, its a silly book.
- Himself - Lampoon Art Director: Doug Kenney came up with the Foto Funnies concept. Doug insisted that they be us. The girls, we brought in. I was so opposed. "Guys, we're a real magazine. We don't need to take Polaroids of the f*ckin' office." I was so wrong. Because what Doug recognized is the audience identified with us. They went, "These are like a bunch of jerk-offs like me. Like you and me, Bernie. Look! " That's Doug Kenney's genius.
- Interviewer: Tell me about National Lampoon. Why do you think its so popular?
- Marshall McLuhan, Himself: Well, I think they're very witty. Yes, they're very witty. But, they are designed to, eh, please and flatter a particular audience of fairly well-to-do nobodies - who can afford to be nobodies.
- P.J. O'Rourke, Himself: Why does one laugh? Laughter's entirely a defense mechanism. Laughter is a, eh, a defense against hostility, a replacement for hostility, a, eh, a defense mechanism against guilt, embarrassment.
- Tony Hendra, Himself: It is the job of a satirist, okay, to make people in power uncomfortable, really uncomfortable, to the point where they go: this has to be stopped.
- P.J. O'Rourke, Himself: I like the Playboy parody that they did where the centerfold girl was *more* tan around her bottom and top. She had reversed tan lines.
- Chevy Chase, Himself: I think if you take yourself back to when you were in your 20s, *all* possibilities appear open to anybody. You know, you could go after anything at any time.
- Rick Meyerowitz, Himself: Their first hire was Michael O'Donoghue and Michael O'Donoghue was not Harvard. Michael O'Donoghue was Buffalo.
- Anne Beatts, Herself: I got into comedy the same way that Catherine the Great got into politics. On my back.
- Henry Beard, Himself: Ed Bluestone came into the office and he said, "You are going to get a dog and you are going to put a pistol to his head and you are going to say: If You Don't Buy This Magazine, We'll Kill This Dog." I said, "Ed, that's the most brilliant thing I've ever heard.
- Interviewer: What about racism being dealt with in the way it is in Lampoon?
- Marshall McLuhan, Himself: I-I suggest, simply, the hotter the issue, the more they cool it by hilarity.
- P.J. O'Rourke, Himself: Really good humor is saying the thing which is true, which you would do anything to deny is true.
- Sean Kelly, Himself: At that point the magazine was on the skids, in terms of its sales. And it was believed by management that the way to get it back to being its - a bestseller - was to have more tits.
- Sean Kelly, Himself: And the more tits and ass we put on the cover, the more 7-Elevens and everybody put it under the counter. So, it didn't matter what was on the cover
- P.J. O'Rourke, Himself: The things that happen to us when we were young, just seem so much more important than other things; because, they're happening for the first time.
- Anne Beatts, Herself: Chris Miller very brilliantly said, "Doug was looking for a better place to jump from when he slipped."