Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I visualize myself winning the Olympic Pentathlon, inventing a phone that can be controlled by brain waves, or doing the laundry. I do not actually DO these things, but I see myself doing them, and that is almost MORE satisfying, because I am also lying down.
I don't know if I was always an open person, but I think stand-up comics specifically have this way of running towards embarrassing things - whereas regular people tend to run away - because the embarrassing story is always going to be the really funny story.
I love being married. I love my husband. I think married people always have that thing where they think that the grass is greener on the single side, but all my single friends are like, "Trust me, you don't want to have to actually interact with these people."
As a comedian, it really gelled when I started doing standup. Because standup is so much about bravery, especially in the early days. There is no doubt that it is going to go terribly for you over and over and over again. But you cannot get funny without bombing.
I was born in California, raised a vegetarian, and love science fiction, so don't tell me how I need to be in order to fit your standards. When I was younger, those kinds of comments bothered me, but eventually got to a point where I realized I wasn't going to change who I was.
If you're a game company, you want to create a singular gaming experience, and part of that is doing stuff that nobody else is doing. If you're trying to create a game that feels different, you're going to create a lead that feels different. It's not going to be just another white guy.
I don't think of myself as a role model, but I do feel like, for women out there who are trying to figure out who they are, the most important choice to make is to live a life that's true to who you are inside. And let your ideas and your heart and your mind drive your fashion choices.
Dartmouth is a small school with high-caliber teaching. Our classes were all taught by professors, not teaching assistants. I felt like that was a school where I could make a big splash. The opportunities would be grander and more robust for me there than at a school with 40,000 students.
I believe that the essence of marriage is choosing someone who loves you for who you are, embraces everything about you, and building a life with that person. Whether that life is with children or without children - it's honestly immaterial to building a life with someone that you love fully.
The more people who come forward and talk about how much they love gaming, how much they talk about individuality and diversity, the more gamers of color that come out and gay gamers that come out and everybody talking about what they love - that's what the community has in common: a love of gaming.
We were poor. My mother got our clothes out of the free box at the church, you know? So much of when you're a kid is about relating about what you watch on TV. And who's got these cooler shoes, and 'Let's trade lunches.' And I was just like, 'I don't have a television. I have a rock and a piece of tofu.'
I think people assume that because I talk the way that I talk that I grew up with money, and then I've had to say, 'No, I grew up poor.' And then I was like, 'Why do I have to play this game where the only black experience that's authentic is the one where you grew up in poverty?' I mean, it's ridiculous.
I started out being a stand up and writing my own material. That took me to Talk Soup, where I was writing and performing for TV. So everything is all the same job in my eyes, and I don't want to ever give up any part of it. I will say that stand-up is my first love; it's how I got started and is in my bones.
I married my husband because I loved him, and I don't feel like there's anybody missing from our marriage, but when you think about this person that you love, and you think about what a wonderful thing it would be to bring another person like that into this world, I think that's the hardest part about all of it.
I've said this before, and I'm sure there are people who disagree, but I feel like one of the reasons there aren't a lot more women in stand-up - and there are many more now; it's not parity, but it's getting there - is that women are not socialized to look stupid or silly. They're socialized to be pretty and precious.
I love to be busy and be challenged. I'm my happiest when I'm under pressure and almost overwhelmed by how much I have to get done. I wish I could say I'm an architect and planned it this way, foresaw doing all these things, but honestly, I've been lucky that things have come across my path and they've worked out well for me.
I have a whole 'Halo' corner in my house. One time, when I went to Bungie, they gave me this awesome 'Halo: Reach' backpack. Usually, when you get stuff like that, it either ends up in the garage or going to charity. But I walk around with that 'Halo: Reach' backpack all the time, and I drink out of my 'Halo: Reach' bottle every day.
Sunday is like this entertainment scrum for me, because I've only got a day, one day of fun. So I want to have brunch, and I want to see a movie, and I want to watch 'Game of Thrones,' and I'm trying to watch 'The Sopranos' from the beginning, and I want to play four hours of video games. So, it's, like, as regimented as my work life.
Successful people just don't let failure define them or keep them from doing what they want to do. For example, I'd have people come up to me after my shows, and they'd say they want to do stand-up but are scared they're going to fail. I'd tell them, "You are going to fail, and anyone who is success has powered through many, many failures."
A belief in feminism is a belief in personal freedom - the freedom to live a life free of fear of violence, to select a fulfilling career and be compensated fairly, to choose when to start a family, to marry whom you love. I want everyone, regardless of gender, to live a life free of restriction or fear, able to pursue their own personal brand of happiness and fulfillment.
Real success and accomplishment, at whatever it is you are passionate about, requires real work. Real sacrifice. Real disappointment. Real failure. And it requires the ability to scrape your sorry ass up off the floor, stumble to your feet, wipe the rivulets of watery drool from your face, and do it again, like an obstinate toddler running against the wall with his head in a bucket.
If you haven't noticed yet, working sucks. Unless you are a racecar driver or an astronaut or Beyonce, working is completely and utterly devoid of awesome. It is hard, it lasts all day, the lighting is generally fluorescent, and, apparently, drinking at your desk is frowned upon. If you ever needed to ruin someone's fun, I mean really poop a party, just move things to the workplace. Fun terminated.
When one is undone—sprawled across the cold tile of a public bathroom in a pool of one’s own vomit, or shivering in the back of a taxi in a pair of urine-soaked skinny jeans with no money for cab fare and a dead cell phone battery—much like a wobbly toddler or an unhinged politician, one immediately looks for someone else to blame. God. Your parents. Ex-girlfriends. Undocumented immigrants. Marvin in Human Resources. China.
I was not one of those people who wanted to be a comedian when I was growing up. I liked comedy, but didn't know it was something you could do for a living. I actually wanted to be an attorney. I did do things on the side like improv and sketch comedy, but law was my focus. I was a very bookish, academic kid. When I got out of college, I was really unhappy. I had a great job that I should have loved, yet I was miserable. I slowly realized that was because I wasn't performing. So I just tried stand-up and fell in love with it after one performance.