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I have never voted. Like most people I am utterly disenchanted by politics. Like most people I regard politicians as frauds and liars and the current political system as nothing more than a bureaucratic means for furthering the augmentation and advantages of economic elites.
There was a year straight where every weekend, I went to at least one bar mitzvah or bat mitzvah, and we would all go, and it was a lot of fun. We sneak some beer; we'd hang out; we would try to get with girls and not. And usually we'd just end up hanging out together alone.
I am trying to inspire people to just take control of their oral health, because if we don't take care of our oral health, it affects so many different aspects of our lives. If your smile and mouth is not together, it affects your relationship, your self-esteem, your health.
The sentiment of those suggesting the Olympics and Paralympics be combined is no doubt well intentioned. But it also echoes the myth that disabled people want to be other than what we are - that we'd like nothing more than to be 'allowed in' with the able-bodied competitors.
Supporting the English cricket team is like supporting a second division football team. I support Norwich City football team and when they lose I really don't mind because I expect them to; but when we win I'm so happy - much happier than any Arsenal supporter could ever be.
My friend Phil Morrison directed a lot of my favorite videos back in the mid- to late-90s - all the Yo La Tengo videos that were funny, a Juliana Hatfield video. He was such an influence with me, and I wanted to do a video the way Phil used to do videos. I did that for Phil.
When I was nine years old, Star Trek came on, I looked at it and I went screaming through the house, 'Come here, mum, everybody, come quick, come quick, there's a black lady on television and she ain't no maid!' I knew right then and there I could be anything I wanted to be.
I want to do stories that are about the bits of cultural furniture that are sitting there that we're like, 'Oh yeah, that's been there for years! What could possibly be weird about it?' And then we're going to lift that piece of furniture and look at all the bugs scurry away.
I think that veganism is a totally great choice with incredible benefits, but I don't think it's reasonable to expect other people to be vegan or to expect everybody to be vegan. You can proselytize all you want, but being vegan is a pretty intense choice for a lot of people.
Near my house in Los Angeles is a waterfall. I love to take the wife and kids, but it's also near a sketchy neighborhood. So there's a lot of gang members that hang out at the waterfall. It's like somebody took an Ansel Adams photo and then put a Cypress Hill video inside it.
Dragged out of your bed at the age of seven, my mother screaming, six kids under the age of 12. I'm not equating my experience with the people who lived in Northern Ireland. But my dad was always out and about late at night, and I could not go to sleep until I knew he was in.
When the audience reacts all together, it's genius. The audience is its own being in a way. It's a weird, amorphous beast that is also somehow a golden emperor that is also somehow every adult you've ever come across in your life who doesn't approve of you - all in one place.
I don't mean to make a generalization, but I do at the same time, from what I know about people from the Midwest, it seems like their families would talk about money openly in front of them when they were kids. They'd say stuff like, 'We're broke! We're gonna lose the house!'
Personally, I think people need to get over this 'being offended' thing. Being offended does not give you the right to silence people. I get offended by things all the time - it's just part of life. The right not to be offended is not a human right, especially in a democracy.
A person with no children says, "Well I just love children," and you say "Why?" and they say, "Because a child is so truthful, that's what I love about 'em - they tell the truth." That's a lie, I've got five of 'em. The only time they tell the truth is if they're having pain.
Racial humor was about 35% of my act when I first started. But I realized that it was a crutch. What brought it home was when another comedian said to me, 'If you changed color tomorrow, you wouldn't have any material.' He meant it as a put-down, but I took it as a challenge.
When the child is twelve, your wife buys her a splendidly silly article of clothing called a training bra. To train what? I never had a training jock. And believe me, when I played football, I could have used a training jock more than any twelve-year-old needs a training bra.
The president had a press conference about this this week and he said that the U.S. has no plans to attack North Korea. And then he added, 'Like having no plan ever stopped me before.'. He has something even more deadly in store for them - we're going to bring them democracy.
You see, the difference is the Republicans' hatred of Obama is based on a paranoid feeling about what he might do, what he's thinking, what he secretly wants to change. Anger with Bush was based on what he actually did. What Bush was thinking didn't matter. Because he wasn't.
New Rule: President Bush must stop acting like WE'RE the idiots. He gives speech after speech, and the theme is always the same; 'What part of freedom don't you get, you morons?'. I'll answer that for you Mr. President. The part where you give it to people by blowing them up.
I think it [ Difficult People] is for people who don't feel that they have been properly represented on TV. I think it's painting a very accurate if slightly exaggerated for comedic purposes view of the LGBT world in a way that we have never, ever seen in any television show.
Fifty Shades Of Grey proved you can write about a dude choking women and shoving stuff up their butts but heaven forbid if you tell a legitimate joke about it. Sure I doubled the number of feminists who hate me, but I also doubled the number of shows I have on TV. No regrets.
I wonder what the most intelligent thing ever said was that started with the word 'dude.' 'Dude, these are isotopes.' 'Dude, we removed your kidney. You're gonna be fine.' 'Dude, I am so stoked to win this Nobel Prize. I just wanna thank Kevin, and Turtle, and all my homies.'
I cannot tell you how proud watching that [Iraqi] war coverage makes me. I know a lot of people are saying that they think that it's, that you know what we're doing is imperialistic. I watch the way we handle ourselves over there and I've never felt more patriotic in my life.
The measure of a conversation is how much mutual recognition there is in it; how much shared there is in it. If you're talking about what's in your own head, or without thought to what people looking and listening will feel, you might as well be in a room talking to yourself.
If you're going to be honest with yourself, you have to admit that you go into show business wanting people to talk about you and wanting everyone to know who you are. But that also means there are going to be a whole bunch of people who don't like you. No matter who you are.
I think all Internet comments should be disengaged. But I kind of live and die by it. It's completely irresistible. It's not like comedy. When I do a podcast or write an episode of TV, I have no feedback for that. That's the only way you know what you're doing is good or bad.
I'm fascinated by mankind. I grew up watching 'Candid Camera' and thought it was funnier than any standup, any joke, anything that could possibly be written because you're dealing with humanity. And people can relate to that. It touches everybody who sees it. It hits a nerve.
Let's be very honest about what this is about. It's not about bashing Democrats, it's not about taxes, they have no idea what the Boston tea party was about, they don't know their history at all. This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up.
Postal inspectors have been given advanced warning that Publishers Clearinghouse is sending packets of laundry detergent that could be mistaken for anthrax. Oh, good timing. What genius came up with this promotion? What's next - a ticking alarm clock? Let's put that in a box.
Couples without kids have each other, their friends, families, and Siri to talk to. It's not like they're quarantining themselves in an underground bunker, never to take a romantic stroll on the beach or attend a Morrissey concert ever again. They're just using birth control.
I once had a leather jacket that got ruined in the rain. Why does moisture ruin leather? Aren't cows outside a lot of the time? When it's raining, do cows go up to the farmhouse, "Let us in! We're all wearing leather! Open the door! We're going to ruin the whole outfit here!"
Whether you're writing television or movies, at some point you're going to encounter a male executive or investor who's going to say, 'I don't like that woman. She's unlikable.' And often, it's literally for being a regular human woman as opposed to an attracting human woman.
Today's comedian has a cross to bear that he built himself. A comedian of the older generation did an act and he told the audience, This is my act. Today's comic is not doing an act. The audience assumes he's telling the truth. What is truth today may be a damn lie next week.
When we're talking about feminism, I get sort of lost in the argument. Because as a woman of color, I don't know where I belong in this argument. Where do I say, 'I would be happy to have less money'? How do you fight for your rights when I'm super-grateful to be here at all?
I have, for a few years, been writing comedy prose - short pieces for my blog - because I found it to be a good way to write while I was on a TV show. It was different enough from my scripts that it felt like a break, but it still was comedy and very fun. I like to do comedy!
They have what you call a black night where they have black people come in for just one night only to watch comedy, and you get all your local drug dealers, thugs, prostitutes, all of them come in, sit down, and listen to you tell jokes. They the hardest people to make laugh.
Six good guest shots on top shows during one season are more than enough and any producer who wants to make me happy could offer some floating guest dates for discussion and panel shows. It's generally agreed that I love to talk, so shows of this kind are right down my alley.
In Sweeden every city looks the same. I've been to sixteen cities, and every single city is the same! The same cobblestone, the same McDonalds, the same everything. Everything was designed by the same guy. They must have saved a lot of money when they designed all the cities.
I famously stole tons of VHS tapes from a video store I worked in. It was detailed in my special, Laboring Under Delusions. I worked at Tower Video and stole a bunch of videotapes from them, and then got caught and had to return the videotapes. It was a mortifying experience.
What?s wrong about eating cows? What do you think god made them for? Their big, their stupid, their delicious. You want more reasons? I never met an animal more prepared to die than a cow. Next time you go to the farm look at a cow in the eyes, it is begging you for a bullet.
I remember talking to comedian Jimmy Pardo about his experience waiting to hear about his own pilot, and we both agreed on one thing: When you can't control your showbiz fate, you can at least control the amount of ice cream you're eating. And if you're like us, it was a lot.
The beautiful thing about stand-up advice is that it applies to anybody, any gender, any race, any age. The best thing you can do - everybody will tell you - is get on stage as much as you can. I would add to that: get on stage as much as you can - with the people you admire.
If I was a research scientist, I'd want people to say, 'You know what, he's a great research scientist, that Ricky Gervais. He's really good, really good.' You know, I'd go to award ceremonies for research scientists and go, 'Yeah, I really worked hard, yeah.' It's brilliant.
When I was forty, I was getting divorced, living in a low-class, dirty hotel in New York. My mother was dying of cancer. I owed $20,000. That was about the lowest. I came back to show business, and I couldn't get a job. I was turned down by every small-time agent in New York.
Self pity is the worst possible emotion anyone can have. And the most destructive. It is, to slightly paraphrase what Wilde said about hatred, and I think actually hatred's a subset of self pity and not the other way around - 'It destroys everything around it, except itself.'
[...] I suppose this was the first time I had ever felt an urge not to be. Never an urge to die, far less an urge to put an end to myself - simply an urge not to be. This disgusting, hostile and unlovely world was not made for me, nor I for it. It was alien to me and I to it.
I started writing songs for youth theater and stuff, and so it's really writing music for the stage that started me out, but then I eventually went to music college and did a two-year course in contemporary music and then just played in endless bands, cover bands, jazz bands.
I tried out for my basketball team every year and I never made it. You had to buy the shoes before you knew if you were on the team because it took a few weeks for them to ship. I bought the shoes every year, never once made the team, had a ton of high school basketball shoes.
I'm prepared to try to talk to a very beautiful girl. I learned a fantastic secret, which is that the most beautiful woman in the room is not being spoken to because she's too intimidating. They're not looking for somebody beautiful; they're looking for somebody to amuse them.