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“For two seasons we wanted to do an episode where Jeff Winger pretended there was a class called ‘Nicolas Cage Appreciation,’ and then the Dean caught them and as punishment to them he was going to make that a real class and force them to watch all the Nicolas Cage movies in one night. The thing about Nicolas Cage movies is… unless you’re a total cynical dick, you have to embrace the fact that Nicolas Cage is a pretty good actor. He’s done a lot of weird, dumb movies, but that was supposed to be the point of the episode — that Nicolas Cage is a metaphor for God, or for society, or for the self, or something. It’s like — what is Nicolas Cage? What is he? Is he an idiot? Or a genius? Can you write him off, or is he inexplicably bound to your soul?”

—Dan Harmon (x)

“Don't be so hard on yourself. Don't put pressure on yourself. Life is just a chain of experiments and results, and you'll be perfect when you're dead.”

—Dan Harmon

“There are no normal people, there are just different kinds of weird, all of it is human and all humanity is better than everything inhuman. So I urge you to keep expressing yourself as honestly as you can, and know that the backpedals and second-guesses really aren't necessary - they don't hurt but they're wasting your time - because when you are truly human, as we all are, and when that is your honest message to anyone, you are beyond reproach, there is no way to screw it up.”

—Dan Harmon

“I’ve done Adderall illegally but I’m not ashamed about that because you’re welcome for Season 2 of Community.”

—Dan Harmon

“[...] I always felt that the triumph of Britta as a character was that she was the only ''real'' person, stuck on Gilligan's island, and ironically being punished by it. Sometimes we would cross the line. I did find myself telling the writer's room here and there, ''let's not make her a dumb blonde, she's a high school dropout and she's computer illiterate and she's a late bloomer because she's lived a fuller live, but there's a difference between that and an airhead.'' If we made her an airhead, it was an accident, or an isolated instance of us being too tempted by a funny joke. Troy was an airhead. Britta was a work of art. She was a post post feminist masterpiece and a televised work of art. If I do say so myself.”

—Dan Harmon on Britta Perry (August 2012)
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“When I pitched the show, I was pitching a very meta story about an asshole that learned to love strangers. I knew it was meta already at the time, but I had no idea how meta it was going to get, because I had no idea that this was going to happen. I was pitching the story of a guy who, like me, had gone to community college and had at one point been invited to be part of a study group, but didn’t want to be part of a study group, because he had nothing to gain from it and everything to lose from it. At some time in that study group, during an all-night study session in that little tiny room at Glendale Community College, I all of a sudden started giving a crap about people that I had nothing to gain from in any realness, other than a human one. I thought scenically in my head at that point, ‘This is the kind of stuff that people eat up, right? This is what they’re always trying to give you on TV to keep you tuned in between Snickers commercials.’ Because people like people, and people that want to write television — people that want to direct it, people that want to edit it, people that want to be creative — we love people, but we’re so often dedicated to our love of people that we’re not actually part of people. I was one of those people, and I probably still am, but at that point I realized, ‘Wow, this is a weird story.’ This guy is not a part of people, but he’s going to become a part of people against his will.”

—~Dan Harmon.

“At this point I was doing it for the fans. These are people who will make you weep. These are 16-year-old girls who decide that two characters should be together, so they make YouTube videos. They spend more time editing them then the people who edit the television show.”

—Dan Harmon, on why he stuck it out when things started to get tough between him and the network (NBC).

“My suggestion for young writers: find your voice and shout it. Know who you are, know what you love, know what you hate and why. Take a piece of paper and press it to the top of your brain and share that map of your universe with anyone who will bother to look at it. If that doesn't appeal to you, the problem solves itself, because there are those among us who are compelled to do it, and they are the ones that should be doing it. Yes, I believe in my heart of hearts that, to quote Stuart Cornfeld, a producer working for Ben Stiller's Red Hour, "talent will out." Talent will out. If you should be doing what you are doing, either by grace of God or the industry's greed, you are going to be discovered. The difficulty is that you can't control when . . . But yes, short or tall, black or white, male or female, weird or handsome, if you are talented, your talent will out. It will rise to the top. And one of the least likable aspects of my personality, by all reports, is that I associate talent with "goodness." So by my perverse definitions, yes, good writing and good people rise to the top and get to make a difference. It's just very important that MORE OF US TRY. I'm looking at you, sixth grade black girl in a public school that likes to write but isn't being told writing is an option by anyone. Maybe it's not an option but if it's your COMPULSION, I believe you owe it to your God, your government and yourself to indulge it come hell or high water.”

—Dan Harmon’s advice to young writers (reddit ama)

“There are no normal people, there are just different kinds of weird, all of it is human and all humanity is better than everything inhuman. So I urge you to keep expressing yourself as honestly as you can, and know that the backpedals and second-guesses really aren't necessary - they don't hurt but they're wasting your time - because when you are truly human, as we all are, and when that is your honest message to anyone, you are beyond reproach, there is no way to screw it up.”

—Dan Harmon
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