Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Pursue whatever it is that you want to do with your life. It is the only secret to happiness that I know except for maybe true love, that and maybe having the amazing health insurance plan that our congressmen have.
In Canada I'm not dealing with people who are bringing in baggage, they just get it. But New Orleans will be a bit different. If there's a group of people who have a right to be bitter, it's the people of New Orleans.
I've been very lucky. There are guys I know who are really terrific in this business of stand-up who have not gotten the recognition they deserve. And it's nice, if you've put in the time, to achieve that recognition.
I was home alone watching George Bush speak on television. So it was just really the two of us. And as I listened to him, I realized, that one of us... was nuts! And for the first time ever, I went, 'Wow, it's not me!'
The reason I like socialism is that it's kind of enforced Christianity. It's basically very Christian, in the sense of "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." These people have nothing, so you have to share.
It's a big thing now: A lot of people want to be assistants to celebrities. If you're pursuing that, you're an idiot. You're a moron. The shortest distance between two points is not a celebrity, or being next to a celebrity.
You look at my audience, and it proves what Congress thinks America is, is wrong. I get people across the political spectrum. Parents and kids come and they're all punked out, and there are these other guys in John Deere caps.
I think comics in New York are interested in being comics. And there're comics in L.A. who are touring comics, who are certainly more interested in stand-up, but a lot of L.A. stand-ups are really looking to do something else.
I had more material on weather than anyone else, I guess, ... back when I was traveling a lot on the road as a standup comic, between airport security and the weather... I just wanted to be prepared for sitting in the airport.
I was a drinker, so I went through the scotches. Before single malts hit, there were really cheap scotches, because nobody was paying attention to them. Then by the time they started jacking those prices up, I moved on to vodka.
What makes it difficult for people trying to follow a dream is that the whole time you feel like you're slamming your head against the wall. So it's nice to make a breakthrough and not kind of lying there with your head bleeding.
What I've found in my career is that 70 to 75 percent of comics are nice and have some sense of social skills, but there are those who end up in comedy because they don't know how to socialize. I don't want to deal with that group.
The thing is, whenever I see Hillary Clinton, I feel like I have to vote for her. She makes me feel guilty because I feel like I should vote for her so that she'll feel better about herself because she'd been in such a bad marriage.
And I know this happens because I took economics, and I'd explain it to ya, but I flunked that course. Not my fault. They taught it at 8 o'clock in the morning. And there is absolutely nothing you can learn out of one bloodshot eye.
You want to know what it's like to be on a plane for 22 hours? Sit in a chair, squeeze your head as hard as you can, don't stop, then take a paper bag and put it over your mouth and nose and breath your own air over and over and over.
Every other civilized country has determined when life begins and it's something that eludes us. We've got things that have to be done! "We didn't fix that bridge because you are all down at the meeting house discussing abortion again."
Then there was the man who declared in court, he wasn't a person. "Excuse me, sir, why haven't you paid your taxes." "Well, as you can clearly see, I am not a person." "Well, you look like a person." "No it's all done with mirrors, trust me!"
No matter what, your parents are going to worry about you. I had a tour bus and my mother still thought I was broke. Remember: It's your life, not theirs. Just because your parents sent you to college doesn't mean they bought the rest of your life.
No matter what, your parents are going to worry about you. I had a tour bus, and my mother still thought I was broke. Remember: It's your life, not theirs. Just because your parents sent you to college doesn't mean they bought the rest of your life.
When you're fund-raising for schools, then something's wrong. We seem to have lost some sort of sense of what the common good is, and if you don't have a sense of what the common good is, then at least give to what you think your specific goods are.
Stupidity really gets me going, when it's just plain stupid, obvious stupidity. And I think that's the reason my act has become more political. I've become somewhat more of a political comic because the level of stupidity I've watched is staggering.
I love anything that gets me outside of my own head. I love music because it's really just - I tried to play piano as a kid. I was awful. It didn't help, and this is absolutely true, that my piano teacher had arthritis. And that's not a good way to learn.
I have never thought of my entertainment as being able to bring about social change. I am seriously always looking for the laugh. What it did make me conscious of was having empathy for those without any power in this country. That has always stuck with me.
Now, most of the time you couldn't be too sure of the quality of the drug. Although, in my experience the stuff was always of a very high quality, because back then we didn't have business majors peddling lower-quality stuff in an effort to increase profits.
I like indoor Christmas trees. And I like people who decorate their homes with lights and all that crap. I think it's a healthy outlet for them. If they weren't covering their lawns with twinkling lights, they'd be doing something that was really, really creepy.
I get an idea about something. I just start thinking about it, and then I get onstage and I talk about it, and then I think about it some more and talk about it some more, and think about it some more and talk about it some more, until it starts to take a shape.
Is a BJ adultery? What? Did I miss a day of school? Of course it is! Oral sex is adultery like Curling is an Olympic sport. The only thing is, oral sex should be in the Olympics because it's much harder than Curling, and if you're good at it, you DESERVE a medal!
I think inevitably over the course of my lifetime there's been an underestimation of the American people, and I believe they are really the ones that give me hope. There's so much of "they don't know this, and they don't know that," and they're always denigrating.
A father and two sons run Adelphia. It's a cable company. And they took from that company a billion dollars. A billion. Three people - three people took a billion dollars. What were they gonna do, start their own space program? 'Let's send the monkey to Mars, Dad!'
When from behind me, a young woman of 25 uttered the following, it was the dumbest thing I have ever heard in my life until Dan Quayle was elected Vice President of the United States. She said, if it weren't for my horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college.
The kids say golf taught them this and that. I get it with the military: A guy joins the military because he needs discipline and has to find himself. But don't tell me, 'Golf helps you find yourself.' I've been playing my whole life, and I'm still looking for myself.
Going up to Canada is great because I'm not dealing with people carrying their agendas into the room. I'm lucky because 97% of the people who come to the show know who they are dealing with, whether they are on the left or the right, we're sharing the same frustration.
Basically I wake up in the morning and I think everything's going to be great. I'm really kind of optimistic, and I look forward to a new day. I pick up 'The New York Times,' and I look at the front page and realize that once again I'm wrong. I start to fixate on stuff.
Stupid presidents, smart presidents, white presidents, black presidents - doesn't work! What this country needs is a crazy Third World dictator. And Donald Trump has what it takes to be that. He's already got a plane with his name on it, solid gold buildings, a harem...
One of the most important things, especially when you're leaving school, is to realize you're going to be dealing with a lot of idiots. And a lot of those idiots are in charge of things, so if you're in an interview and you really want to tell the person off, don't do it.
It was the coldest winter ever! I thought last winter was the coldest winter ever, but I was wrong now wasn't I? You see because I travel all the time. So last winter, I'd be in the midwest, and the blizzard would hit. And then I'd fly home, and the blizzard would hit again!
The thing that makes my generation The Greatest is our ability to hang out. We're spectacular at it. If you take somebody from my generation and sit them on a couch and bring them food and plumbing, they'll sit there and talk to you about anything you want until the day you die.
In a series of wonderful essays, Evan Handler gives himself up to us - warts and all. To our amusement and bemusement we share in his emotional growth as he struggles to mature. I not only laughed along with him but felt that I too had grown a little along the way. Who could ask for more?
I've got stress like anybody else, and it builds up during the day. Like, I'll be trying to do something on the computer, and I'll get stuck ,so I go to the help section. And it just enrages me, because why even call it a help section at all? There's nothing in any way 'helpful' about it.
I've got stress like anybody else, and it builds up during the day. Like, I'll be trying to do something on the computer, and I'll get stuck, so I go to the help section. And it just enrages me, because why even call it a help section at all? There's nothing in any way 'helpful' about it.
If you're working out in front of a mirror and watching your muscles grow, your ego has reached a point where it is now eating itself. That's why I believe there should be a psychiatrist at every health club, so that when they see you doing this, they will take you away for a little chat.
None of this seems to affect the leadership, that people don't go out to vote, that they don't feel the need to go vote, that they already feel disenfranchised. It's not just Obama's fault or Clinton's or whomever's, it's all of them, the whole collection of clowns I've had to sit through.
It took forever for me to get work because I was a political comic, and now it's become good business, and God knows how long that'll last. You have to do it night after night after night to kind of make it. I still find myself on 'Piers Morgan' or on some show and I think, 'I hope this is funny.'
I have no religion because I was born and raised Jewish. And on the first night of Hanukkah, my parents, when I was very young, gave me a top to play with. They called it a dreidel. I knew it was a top. And as I looked at that top, I said, 'You know. I don't think I'm gonna be Jewish for very long.
I was broke until I was 40. Really broke. I could get by, but I had nothing. No health insurance, so if something happened I was screwed. I was lucky my parents had money and my brother was willing to support me for a long time. Once I started doing standup, I had an income, and that was amazing to me.
You are an adult, and you can dress up whenever you want to. You don't need permission anymore! If you wake up next tuesday, and you feel like being Batman, go for it! And then you go to work, and your boss will look up and go "who are you," and you can say: "I am Batman. That's who I am, who are you?"
When they played, it wasn't music. It was the sound of chaos. I knew it was the sound of chaos because you could hear pigs being slaughtered. Women were weeping and men were gnashing their teeth, and there were sounds so horrible that I cannot repeat them to you, or you would flee from this room in horror!
Everybody's always asking me about my blood pressure. They did an interview once where they hooked me up to a blood pressure machine and they'd rile me. I'd yell and scream, and then it would just go back to normal in a few minutes. Everything else is probably rotting, but the blood pressure is spectacular.
What you don't do, if you're an adult, is decide that you're going to budget things through a sequester. What does that word have to do with budgeting? It's like if you have a family budget and go, 'We really don't know what to take out economically from the budget, so we're going to whack out protein for this week.'
Anybody who likes writing a book is an idiot. Because it's impossible; it's like having a homework assignment every stinking day until it's done. And by the time you get it in, it's done and you're sitting there reading it, and you realize the 12,000 things you didn't do. I mean, writing isn't fun. It's never been fun.