Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
If you have a secret, and it's embarrassing to you, when you tell that story - you own it. It becomes yours, and no one can use it against you.
I grew up on the back of a motorcycle - my dad didn't have a car until I was a teenager. And then my closest friend from grade school was a guy.
I think the thing I fear most in life is waking up one day and not feeling challenge - feeling ambivalent or glib about what I have to do that day.
God, I mean I had so many people tell me, 'What you're doing doesn't work.' I used to have to get on stage and apologize for talking the way that I speak.
I always tell people that if you really want to know somebody, they should listen to that person's interview with me. I spend a lot of time with my guests.
I went to private school for two years, then Aptos Middle School, and I finished at McAteer. Several of my classmates at those schools are my friends today.
Instead of focusing on, 'Oh, there's a black lady who plays videogames,' focus on that there's another person out there who loves the same stuff that you do.
One thing we do really well on Archer and one thing I've always tried to do in my comedy and my writing and my podcast is to never speak down to my audience.
I talk to grown-ups who are out to have a good time and they want to be spoken to in a different way. I don't want to be pandered to, so I try not to pander.
I take the most wrenchingly painful moments of my life, brush them off and present them for the amusement of others. Luckily for me, my childhood was torture.
I was like, 'I want us to stop using that term. I'm not a 'girl gamer.' I'm just a gamer.' The reasons I love gaming are the same reasons everyone loves gaming.
For someone to say that marriage is only about procreation is a joke. I didn't marry my husband to have children. I married my husband because I love my husband.
Standup comedy is inordinately difficult. If doing something else for a living will make you equally happy, choose that instead. I'm serious. Comedy is punishing.
The whole principle of coming out is that everyone knows someone who's gay. The minute someone comes out, no one can be a bigot, because someone they love is gay.
Everybody has those stories that make them wince when they think about them silently. But as soon as you tell that story, it becomes a little bit less cringe-inducing.
I have one girlfriend who is dating right now - she's divorced - and she's on Tinder, so we play Tinder. I know that's not a real game, but it's my favorite thing to do.
Not only was I the only black kid and the only poor kid, but my parents were transcendental meditation devotees, and I live in an ashram for a good portion of my childhood.
I was raised by a single dad. Dad's idea of hanging out with your kid or day care was give her $20 in quarters, drop her at the arcade, and tell her not to talk to strangers.
After going through a lot of procedures and spending a lot of money … the doctor said, ‘Look, based on what we’re seeing here, I just don’t think this is going to happen for you.'
I thought I was gonna be an attorney, so I went to Dartmouth and I was a government major and I minored in environmental policy, and I didn't do anything academically around the arts.
You can't control where you were born, the family you were born into, what you look like; you can't control any of those circumstances. The only thing you can control is how you react.
So much of a stand-up's life is doing live radio and having to be funny and quick on the spot with these strangers, and sort of surgical in terms of how funny I can be in three minutes.
I think people sleepwalk through their lives, and for me, I wanted to embrace everything. And that meant the agonizing pain and the transcendence, and you can't have one without the other.
I like to be nice. I want to be a hero. I want to save people. Or just kill zombies, because they deserve it, because they're already dead and they can't feel it. They don't have feelings.
I'm trying my hand at directing. I'm doing an independent movie that we haven't started casting yet, but it's like an edgy version of 'Lethal Weapon' and '48 Hours,' only with two women in it.
I'm just going to be the best version of me that I could possibly be and be as funny as I possibly can. I've just got to be myself and hopefully people will find me. And my audience did find me.
And I was the only black kid in my school for almost all of my childhood, until I was a teenager. So imagine, if you will, being 6 feet tall by third grade, so essentially being a living maypole.
I didn't mind being in a school with a small African-American population. The African-American-community was very tight, and that was great. But I also wanted to interact with other types of folks.
You know, it's about getting out there and having a good time. Not about worrying - all these young books for women are like I'm 29 with a closet full of Prada shoes and I can't get a date. Come on.
I wasn't mentally prepared to take care of them, I was focused on my career. And then when I got to be in my 40s and I thought about having kids, I wasn't able to have kids naturally. I don't regret it.
It's hard because you can't legislate creative diversity. I think it's more that the gaming community's more diverse, and they're going to ask for more diverse experiences. They're going to demand them.
I think diversity in television is important. It's not about trying to fill a quota or satisfy some idea of diversity, but I think what diversity brings to any daypart is more eyeballs, just more opportunity.
Every ethnic group has this where people within it will try and tell each other how they should be. So what I would say to other people is to just embrace who you are because you will become instantly happier.
If you have an embarrassing story, and it's a source of shame, keeping it in just compounds the shame and turns the story into something poisonous. And if someone knows about it, then it can be used against you.
People challenge my nerd cred all the time. I just show them the photo of me winning my middle-school science fair, wearing my Casio calculator watch and eyeglasses so big they look like they can see the future.
If you look at shows like 'Def Comedy Jam' in its heyday, there were so many really funny, talented black comics that never would have gotten on that show because they just weren't doing comedy that fit that mold.
One of the first movies my dad took me to see was the original 'Road Warrior.' And I was kind of raised on the action movies of that era: 'The Terminator' and 'Die Hard' and, of course, all of the 'Star Wars' movies.
I think art comes out of meaningful experiences, and it's hard to make art when your meaningful experience is getting into your electric car and driving from your fancy house in the Hills to your fancy job in the Valley.
I can't control what's fair and unfair. I can't control the nature of the business or the nature of society or the nature of the world, but what I can control is how I choose to see the world and what I choose to put back into it.
I acted out a lot. I was very nerdy. I was very isolated, which I made up for by kind of talking and trying to entertain people and get them to like me, so I did theatre and improv in high school and college, but always as a hobby.
I see the first 'Bourne' movie as really kind of a fulcrum in changing the modern action film, where things are really gritty and really character-driven. Think about how the entire Bond franchise was completely radicalized by Bourne.
I hated, when I was a kid, being told that 'Black people don't do that.' And the white kids at school didn't accept me because I was black, and the black kids in my neighborhood didn't accept me because they thought I thought I was white.
I remember leaving the first 'Matrix' movie feeling completely radicalized, completely changed. I think we all, from our ordinary lives, like to think about putting ourselves into these extraordinary situations and wonder how we'd respond.
One thing about creativity is, when you feel confident and respected, you're more likely to pitch more interesting stuff because you're not as precious with it. You feel like, 'This is going to land, and I'm going to be supported in this.'
The only way I was going to be funny was if I was myself, and either you liked it, or you didn't. Either you got on my train, or you didn't. Freeing myself of this idea that I had to fit a certain mold was when I was able to be my funniest.
No one wants to hear about how awesome you were; people want to hear about the time you blew it. So I think the longer you do stand-up, the more comfortable you are. You stop wanting to hide your foibles and instead want to show who you are.
The only concept or experience or core belief that I can attribute my other-ness to is that I just started out a weirdo and I stayed a weirdo. And it took me a long time to embrace my outsidership and see it as a strength rather than a weakness.
I've always loved video games. I played 'Ms. Pac-man' with my dad, and I Ioved 'Galaga' and 'Tempest' and grew up on the standing arcade games. Even to this day, my dad will call me if he's playing 'Ms. Pac-man' and hold the phone up to the game.
When I was young I thought, 'Yeah, people don't see, they're not recognizing how funny I am, and how talented I am'. And the guys that mentored me were like, 'You just have to keep getting up'. And I look back and they were right. They were all right.
Comedy's really about not being afraid to look terrible, look ugly, look silly, make fun of yourself. And that's something that women are just not socialized to do. But more women are doing it, and more women have examples of women doing it brilliantly.