Love & Passion Quote by Garry Shandling

Shandling is doing that particular kind of comedic judo where the punchline isn’t sex, it’s the ego that sex is supposed to flatter. He starts in the register of grown-up erotic wisdom - "less is more", "let the woman come to me" - the language of a man presenting himself as attentive, restrained, maybe even enlightened. Then he yanks the rug: the final admission doesn’t just undercut the lover persona, it annihilates it. "I don't even need a woman there" turns seduction into solipsism, intimacy into a one-man show.

The intent is classic Shandling: expose the performance inside masculinity by pushing it past credibility. He’s parodying the way men narrate their own sexual competence as a kind of spiritual minimalism, like they’re Zen masters of the bedroom. The subtext is less "I’m great in bed" than "I’m so committed to being the protagonist that other people are optional". He’s mocking the cultural script where women become props in the story of male desire - then admitting, with a comedian’s ruthless honesty, that the prop can be cut entirely.

Context matters because Shandling’s whole career was a study in meta-neediness: the guy who wants applause but resents needing it. This line fits that worldview. It’s not a crude boast so much as a bleak little confession disguised as bravado: the ultimate fantasy isn’t sex, it’s control, no negotiation required.