Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
You didn't question - kind of like, you would go to college. You would wear a tie to work. You would, you know, you would work for 40 years. And then you would play golf for three years, and then you would die. That was how I was raised.
What was the idea behind Hot Pockets? Was there a marketing meeting somewhere, 'Hey I got an idea: How about we take a Pop-Tart and fill it with really nasty meat? You could cook it in a sleeve thing, and you could dunk it in the toilet.'
A lot of people are like, "You're doing commercials?" And I honestly feel like those Sierra Mist commercials are better than a lot of sitcoms I get offered. It's hard work, and I'm paid a lot of money, and I do it because I love the soda.
Whenever I'm out of town for at least a week, I feel like I should write a postcard or something, but you can be a genius, you try and write a postcard you come across like a moron anyway: 'This city's got big buildings. I like food. Bye.'
I feel guilty if I'm not reading books, but I read scripts of movies or things that I know I'm committed to that I'm going to do the project. I tell myself, "I'm going to read this script like six times," and I only read it the initial time.
I never have free time, I don't know about you. You ever go to the cash machine, there's two people in line in front of you and you get kinda flustered, you're like "Forget it! I'm not standing here for 40 seconds. I got things to do, okay?"
You ever buy a book and not read it? You feel almost guilty having it up on a bookshelf. People are like, "Hey, how's that book?" "I haven't read it." "Oh, did you just buy it?" "I've had it since high school." "Well, can I borrow it?" "No."
It's good to be back in New York. I have lived here ten years. I'm originally from Indiana. I know what most of you are thinking: Indiana: Mafia. But the fact of the matter is where I grew up there was something very similar to the Mafia: 4-H.
I love how New York is so multicultural. I wish I was ethnic, I'm nothing. Because if you're Hispanic and you get angry, people are like, 'He's got a Latin temper!' If you're a white guy and you get angry, people are like, 'That guy's a jerk.'
Holidays are also an opportunity for kids to unlearn every good habit they've learned during the rest of the year. They don't go to school. They get to stay up past their bedtime. They get candy and presents for doing nothing. Childhood utopia.
I saw this college team bowling championship. Each team had their own coach. What kind of strategy advice is a bowling coach giving? "You know what? This time Timmy, I want you to knock down all the pins." "You sure?" "Trust me. Just do it son!"
Nursery schools and bars at 2 a.m. are the only places where it is completely normal if someone just spontaneously throws up on the floor...and just like a toddler, the bar patron wakes up the next day not remembering or caring how they behaved.
The Thanksgiving tradition is, we gorge. Hey, what about at Thanksgiving we simply consume a considerable measure? However we do that consistently! Goodness. Imagine a scenario where we consume a ton with individuals who pester the heck out of us.
The whole idea of celebrity is flattering - it helps you get into restaurants and stuff - but once you obtain some creative fulfillment, which you do on a nightly basis as a comedian, it's hard to give that up just to be the wacky neighbor on a show.
When people look and decide they have nothing in common with me - I'm 43, balding, blond, whatever - there's something absolutely invigorating about winning them over. Even if it's eight people from Sweden who don't understand what I'm talking about.
There were times in my life when I had one thing to do all day, but I still couldn’t get to it. “I gotta go to the post office, but I’d probably have to put on pants. And they’re only open till five. Looks like I’m going to have to do that next week.
Thanksgiving. It's like we didn't even try to come up with a tradition. The tradition is, we overeat. 'Hey, how about at Thanksgiving we just eat a lot?' 'But we do that every day!' 'Oh. What if we eat a lot with people that annoy the hell out of us?'
How did we get to the point where we're paying for bottled water? That must have been some weird marketing meeting over in France. Some French guy's sitting there, like, "How dumb do I think the Americans are? I bet you we could sell those idiots water."
I live in New York City, but it doesn't matter if you're in any large, metropolitan area, there's kind of a little bit of survival-of-the-fittest, so when you encounter kindness or people going out of their way in an empathetic way, it's almost startling.
I've been doing stand-up for so long, I think 19 years, that I love topics I can also expand on. Once I identify a topic like, say, seafood, which is a big one right now, it's like there are different kinds of tangents I can go on to build a larger chunk.
Television's very much a writer's medium, as it probably should be, but if you're not the writer, then as the performer, you defer to that. It's just kind of how it's constructed. Is there some leeway? Yeah. But I also don't want to come across as a jerk.
I always want my standup act to appeal to everybody in the room, and when I started standup, and I would see people talk about their kids and their wife, and I'd always cringe a little bit, like, 'I can't get a date, I don't know what you're talking about.'
I'm kind of like a guy who's missing a little bit of the guy gene. Like, I love steak, but the notion of golfing is the last thing I would want to do. I love women, but I'm also a mama's boy, and some of my best friends are women. So I'm kinda half guy's guy.
Some people that work for Hot Pockets came to my Denver Paramount Theater show. They brought these hot pocket boxes the size of suit cases for me to sign. I wrote "these are WMD's" on the boxes. The HP people seem to have a good sense of humor about all of it.
Wouldn't it have been weird to go to high school with the Pope? You know, somebody did, someone's sitting at home, watching TV in Poland, they see the Pope, they think, "That guy was a jerk! He was so mean to me and now he's Pope? I got a swirly from the Pope!"
I liked the idea that my character was not gonna be the typical dumb guy that I play, typically. I also loved the fact that it was dealing with kind of adult-extended adolescence, which I think is always interesting - a bunch of people that don't wanna grow up.
Whenever you go out to eat you gotta get the appetizer. 'Cause the appetizer's just an excuse for an extra meal. You're always like "Lets see, I will start with the 80 buffalo wings...and do you have a low-cal blue cheese? 'Cause I don't wanna fill up too much."
Every now and then I'll read a book, I'll be so proud of myself, I'll try and squeeze it into conversation. People will be like, "Hey Jim, how ya do-" "I read a book! Two hundred and fifty pages!" "That's great, what was it about?" "No idea! Took me three years!"
As a dad, you are the Vice President of the executive branch of parenting. It doesn't matter what your personality is like, you will always be Al Gore to your wife's Bill Clinton. She feels the pain and you are the annoying nerd telling them to turn off the lights.
The amount of guilt you deal with as a parent is pretty profound. It's a constant balancing act. I'm an ambitious person, but when I became a father, ambition had a different hold on me. Providing for my kids was important, but the superficial ambition drifted away.
I'm from Indiana. I know what you're thinking, Indiana... Mafia. But in Indiana it's not like New York where everyone's like, 'We're from New York and we're the best' or 'We're from Texas and we like things big' it's more like 'We're from Indiana and we're gonna move.'
I guess the reasons against having more children always seem uninspiring and superficial. What exactly am I missing out on? Money? A few more hours of sleep? A more peaceful meal? More hair? These are nothing compared to what I get from these five monsters who rule my life.
I don't know about you, but when they first introduced bottled water, I thought it was so funny, I was like "Bottled water! Haha, they're selling bottled water! ... I guess I'll try it. Ah, this is good, this is more watery than water. Yeah, this has got a water kick to it."
Comedians kind of write what comes to them. You can give yourself little assignments, but it's what inspires you. So I feel like with food, it is a passion of mine. It's where my sensibility rests. I love topics that are universal, and I love stuff that doesn't alienate people.
I'd been acting and doing stand-up in New York about eight years, getting rejected, and I finally got the opportunity to do stand-up on Letterman, which holds even more importance for me. With comedians, that's definitely the pinnacle, but being from Indiana, it was a big to-do.
I've had plenty of friends tell me that their first time doing stand-up, they do well, and then they tank for a while after that. Kind of like the first time you do a drug, you're like, "Huh! This is pretty darn good," and then you spend all your money trying to get the same high.
Not that I don't think irreverent humor and someone being filthy is funny, I just do what I do. Any comedian would admit throwing an f-bomb in there would help get a reaction. ... I'm not on a Puritanical pursuit, but when I would curse in a joke, I believe I'm not done writing it.
I do Sierra Mist commercials not because they pay me a lot of money or because it only takes a couple of days. I do it because I have a respect for all sodas and I like to communicate that. Some people say soda, some people say pop, where I'm from in Indiana they called it breakfast.
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.'
Stand-up is so rewarding, and I enjoy the acting opportunities I've had, but the only time I really feel bad is when I feel like I have this manufactured belief that I should be doing something else or there should be some type of recognition. On an intellectual level, I know it's stupid.
The entertainment business is such a strange, crazy perception business that you're either given way too much respect, like people saying, "You should be the head of the sitcom!" Or you're given no respect, where they're like, "You should audition to be the garbage man that lives four houses down."
It is amazing how much more amazing sleep is in the morning. You wake up and you're like, "I stayed up to do what?! Watch Growing Pains? What was I thinking!?" But at night you're like, "La La La La La, Hey! Growing Pains, awesome! And I've seen this episode. That Kirk Cameron's always in trouble."
I was always told that Hoosier came from when settlers in the state, when a stranger came on their property they'd say, "Who's there? Who's there?" So people that were from Indiana were the people that said "Who's there?" But what do I know? I don't read or interact with people outside the Internet.
Do you ever leave a message for somebody and the answering machine cuts you off, and you have to decide whether you should not call back, or call back and appear like a stalker? "Hi. It's me again. I forgot to tell you that I'm going to kill you. Because I'm the freak who keeps calling and calling."
Some fast food places, they have that ketchup pump. It's like a keg. They give you the paper shot glass. I always like to hang around there, try and meet the ladies. "Here, I'll pump for you. You come to this Wendy's often? My roommate and I, we got a pony pump back at my dorm. Here's an extra shot "
But truly, women are amazing. Think about it this way: a woman can grow a baby inside her body. Then a woman can deliver the baby through her body. Then, by some miracle, a woman can feed a baby with her body. When you compare that to the male’s contribution to life, it’s kind of embarrassing, really.
It's weird, I love acting and stand-up is a very unique, solitary thing where you are the writer, performer and director. But acting is incredibly rewarding, working and interacting with people to create funny moments. I can't imagine not doing acting or stand-up, I really enjoy both of them that much.
People treat having a kid as somehow retiring from success. Quitting. Have you seen a baby? They’re pretty cute. Loving them is pretty easy. Smiling babies should actually be categorized by the pharmaceutical industry as a powerful antidepressant. Being happy is really the definition of success, isn’t it?
Sometimes being lazy can get you in trouble. You ever not take a shower all weekend, just lounge around, then you're running late for work on Monday? There's always one person at work: "Something smells like smoke in here!" "Uh, I went to a barbeque on Friday night. Only had 48 hours to take a shower. Busy."
I think what Pope Francis is saying is that nobody's perfect, you know? And so someone like Joe Biden, you know, where - you know, when he was running for president, people were - there were some bishops that were like don't let him have the Eucharist. And Pope Francis is saying that's not the point of this.