Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Over the road there was a church: a modern gray building, which constantly played a recording of church bells. Strange it was. Why no proper bells? I never went in but I bet it was a robot church for androids, where the Bible was in binary and their Jesus had laser eyes and metal claws.
TV is a different animal. It's not a club set. As you said, you do short sets on TV - about five minutes. So you have to get that rhythm down and also be aware of the camera so you're connecting with the viewers at home as well as the studio audience. It's a different muscle to develop.
I think we're getting to the point where everyone's getting fat and everyone's getting allergic, or claims to be allergic to something and people can't walk from their front door to their car without a bottle of water in their hand because they have to hydrate every three and half steps.
I have a very deep belief that all the problems in society are not because some people are bad and some people are good and we have to get rid of all the wrong people. Everything that we want to fix is because of a flaw in humans in general, something that humans together do incorrectly.
In Edna, I created a satiric portrait of my hometown of Melbourne, a large provincial English city paradoxically in far Southeast Asia. She's a theatrical figure, related to vaudeville in some respects. She inhabits a world in which there are comparatively few female exponents of comedy.
Went to the grocery store, got everything on my list and went up to the checkout. I put a bag of pet food for our rabbit on the conveyor. The girl looked at me and said, Do you have a rabbit? I looked at here and said deadpan, Nope. Just like 'em 'cause they're crunchy. Here's your sign.
When did the business community in America become so sensitive? ... that we have to treat like some type of rare exotic animal - don't startle them or they'll fly away!...we need to soothe them so they can nest here and lay their magic eggs full of jobs! - WHICH NEVER HATCH BY THE WAY!!!
When I was young and didn't have money, I liked gambling because winning and losing was fun for the rush of it. The amount of money that I would have to put down now to get that rush, there is no f'ing way I'm going to do it. It's just stupid. I would rather get that rush some other way.
There's something so awesome about being able to get up in front of a microphone and do exactly what you want. Stand-up is as close as you're ever going to get to being 100 percent in control of a situation artistically, and I don't understand why people wouldn't want to keep doing that.
Sometimes if I really want to get someone's attention, I'll start a sentence with something like, "I'm not racist, but..." I say, "I'm not racist, but you look great today." They say, "That wasn't racist at all." I said, "I know. I said I'm not racist. You never listen. Typical Mexican."
There's an idea that the human body is somehow evil and bad and there are parts of it that are especially evil and bad, and we should be ashamed. Fear, guilt and shame are built into the attitude toward sex and the body. It's reflected in these prohibitions and these taboos that we have.
Baby boomers helped me a great deal in my career. They launched me. They were there for me to sing my song to. And I'm not saying I'm better than anyone, but I think they turned that anti-authority baby boom mentality into their own enemy. Now I identify very closely with their children.
I had this idea that being an introvert was a negative thing, that it had a negative connotation, and I really wanted, as a young person, to strive to be the life of the party and to be really outgoing and to have a million friends. And then I realized that an introvert isn't a negative.
I was just utterly oblivious to how difficult it was, and how difficult it was going to be, and then also in the mid-eighties through the mid-nineties there was a boom of sorts. So there were plenty of stages. If I had started now, there would be very few places to get better and better.
We grew up watching Woody Allen and Albert Brooks movies, and we see this neurotic, annoying, unlikeable male at the center of a story, and people root for him anyway. I think that's really what we have been craving as women is the hero who doesn't look perfect and doesn't act perfectly.
As I go on in standup, I keep being described as cleaner and cleaner as I do each hour, they're like, 'It's unbelievable how clean,' 'He's the cleanest person in the world.' And then I'll do shows and people will be like, 'You're supposed to be so clean, but you're talking about cancer.'
I need to keep my ad-libbing skills honed and make sure I'm able to banter with people and treat topics a bit more light-heartedly. But as a stand-up, first and foremost, my job is to make sure that I can write the routine that hopefully people will talk about when something big happens.
You can't answer a kid's question. A kid never accepts any answer. A kid never says, 'Oh, thanks. I get it.'... They just keep coming with more questions - why, why, why? - until you don't even know who the fk you are anymore at the end of the conversation. It's an insane deconstruction.
My show is sort of a short-film anthology, and I'm able to tell little stories that don't necessarily carry a whole episode in terms of narrative. I like the audience not being sure what they're getting. I think it's more fun to watch something when you're discovering it as you go along.
As a comedian, you want people to like you. That's part of why you're there in the first place: You have this unquenchable need to be liked, and then when you divert from that and take a chance at doing something that has moments of fierce unlikeability, you can hit some real low points.
There was a product on late night TV that you could attach to your garden hose - "You can water your hard-to-reach plants with this." Who would make their plants hard to reach? That seems so very mean. I know you need water, but I'm going to make you hard to reach. "Think like a cactus!"
I started on 'Saturday Night Live' the same time Conan started on 'Late Night.' We just had a relationship because I would be upstairs in the studio and whenever he couldn't get a guest - which was often back then since he was just starting out - he would just call me down to be a guest.
I watch political shows for a number of weeks in a row, and all I see are guys arguing with each other over issues I have no idea about. My brother, he loves war-torn places. My dad would always read the paper and tell me I should watch CNN, but I usually wind up watching 'Breaking Bad.'
Hotel bars are pretty good. No one bothers me there. Restaurants are safe. People are quite respectful when you're eating. But what I never do now is go to a busy bar on the weekend, or after 8 o'clock at night. That's the danger zone. Also being trapped. Never go on the Metro, or a bus.
I look forward to going to Chicago because it's where I grew up, and the food there is so munch. Especially during the winter, I get deep dish pizza or Italian beef, and it warms me up. It's something I don't normally get, especially here in L.A. where you're always trying to be healthy.
We need to make sure that the powers that be know that arts education is as vital and as important as geography and arithmetic. You know, it is a part of the spiritual and the soulful experience and expression of being human and it is a necessity, as necessary as water, as breathing air.
I look for women I know are gonna bust me up good. Come on, man, who can resist that? Who can resist that emotional pain? Yeah, they all have the same line, they're so sweet: I'm not gonna hurt you like all the others. Really I'm not. I'm gonna introduce you to a whole new level of pain!
I get along very well with the cast of '30 Rock.' I guess I bring a certain quirkiness to the show as well. I'm just thankful they keep asking me. I didn't think I was going to be asked back so every time they say, 'We want you back,' I'm screaming. I'm jumping up and down and screaming.
There is something in the American project, something in simple American oratory, something in the hope and idealism of this frustrating and contradictory nation that still makes my spirits soar and my heart leap with optimism and belief. If only they understood how to make a cup of tea.
I believe in kindness and niceness and lots of spiritual things, but the real intellectual rigor and quest of logic is something that I'm afraid takes incredibly hard work and we live in an age in which hard work is if not actively deprecated or denigrated it is run away from or ignored.
Nowadays a lot of what was wrong with me would no doubt be ascribed to Attention Deficit Disorder, tartrazine food colouring, dairy produce and air pollution. A few hundred years earlier it would have been demons, still the best analogy I think, but not much help when it comes to a cure.
It's ridiculous that we are in a place where we feel like we can classify and dismiss certain groups of people just because of the way they look, or we have these standards of health - like, cellulite is something you need to get rid of. No, it isn't. It's just a part of people's bodies.
I watched Master Class with Lorne Michaels on OWN. How can somebody produce a sketch show and talk for an hour and not say something even slightly amusing, or sarcastic, or ironic, or interesting, or informative? 'My mission as a producer is to encourage creativity.' Mission accomplished.
Todd Glass has amazing energy on stage. Dave Attell is one of my favorites because he's a one liner comic who is always incredibly in the moment with the audience. As for newer people, I think Adrienne Iapalucci writes some great, dark jokes and Sean Patton has a hilarious voice on stage.
I listen to WTF with Marc Maron, although I'm getting annoyed with him, he's a bit too intrusive and fawning. But he's done some great interviews in the past, like with David Simon, the writer of The Wire, and Bruce Springsteen. He gets fantastic guests. I just wish he let them talk more.
I had a gentleman steal or 'misplace' - I guess I should say 'allegedly' - a lot of money from me. It didn't make any sense when it was happening, because I just didn't understand why I didn't have any money. I was a perfect mark because I had all of this shame and insecurity about money.
I'm waiting for some studio to be like, 'Look, we need you to be totes buff.' 'I'm sorry, what'd you say?' 'Totes buff. We're gonna get you a trainer.' And I'm like, 'Oh, awesome! I've been waiting for this moment.' I would love to get in shape for a reason besides my own health and life.
If you lived next door to me and didn't know what I did, you wouldn't know I was a celebrity. I don't have that lifestyle, nor do I want that lifestyle. I want to know that I can have a separate life with my wife and my kids and just be normal and go camping and fishing and outdoor stuff.
Just because your tattoo has Chinese characters in it doesn't make you spiritual. It's right above the crack of your ass, and it translate to beef with broccoli. The last time you did anything spiritual, you were praying to God you weren't pregnant. You're not spiritual. You're just high.
I'm very interested in trying to make comedy shows that are a bit bigger, more theatrical, more of a "show." Some people might say I'm trying too hard, but that's a compliment to me. I like to inject a bit of production value and flair to comedy, or at least to my little corner of comedy.
I'm clearly doing what I want. I hope kids can see my act and feel like they can be slightly more comfortable in their own skin because I'm being so ridiculously comfortable in mine. I'm not that comfortable in my skin the moment I walk offstage. But I try to project that while I'm on it.
We got to his place and it looked a lot like his personality. Just a bunch of space filler, nothing to really wow you. It looked like he had bought a lot of stuff from IKEA and then decided to refinish it at home. Everything was neat and tidy, but you wouldn't want any of it for yourself.
In the world of animation, you can be anything you wanna be. If you're a fat woman, you can play a skinny princess. If you're short wimpy guy, you can play a tall gladiator. If you're a white man, you can play an Arabian prince. And if you're a black man, you can play a donkey or a zebra.
Every man has to settle down eventually. You know why you gotta settle down eventually? Because you don't want to be the old guy in the club. You know what I'm talking about. Every club you go into, there's always some old guy. He ain't really old, just a little too old to be in the club.
All people naturally hate. My kid bites people now. I didn't teach my kid to bite anybody. Kids say mean stuff. Only through love do we get this evil out of them. Only through love and structure and discipline do they not hate. The kids that hate didn't learn anything, that's the problem.
What if you died, and you found out that when you died, we all went to the same place. No Heaven, no Hell, doesn't matter what you did in life - you all go to the same place, regardless. I know a lot of nice people who will be really pissed off. You'll see Gandhi arguing with the doorman.
I've learned something on the road, traveling around: state shapes. The easier it is to draw the shape of the state, the harder it is to live in that state. So, if you live in a regular polygon, get the hell outta there. You gotta move to a squiggly area. Culture's attracted to squiggles.
When I was younger, I'd get very empirical with myself. "I have a hypothesis about myself. I'll put myself in a situation, see what happens, then I'll draw a conclusion based on the empirical evidence. Hypothesis: I can play basketball." So I'd try. "Conclusion: I cannot play basketball."
The White House again refused to turn over discussions Vice President Cheney had with Enron officials over energy policy. Cheney said if he had to disclose every time some business donated a ton of money then came in to write its own policy to govern itself, he wouldn't get any work done.
We have two dogs, Mabel and Wolf, and three cats at home, Charlie, George and Chairman. We have two cats on our farm, Tom and Little Sister, two horses, and two mini horses, Hannah and Tricky. We also have two cows, Holy and Madonna. And those are only the animals we let sleep in our bed.