Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
If I'm not in the theatre, I'm in an open mic night or doing a guest set at the Comedy Club, or whatever, just trying to develop stuff.
Here's how I operate. When I see something I like, 20 years later, I ask her brother for her phone number. She don't even see me coming.
I'm not the judge of who that is, but I am a believer that no debt in the universe goes unpaid. If you try to buy early, you'll pay late.
I've got a great cigar collection - it's actually not a collection, because that would imply I wasn't going to smoke every last one of 'em.
I could do no wrong in my mother's eyes from the day I was born. My fans bought her a very nice house in San Antonio, and she has a great life.
I don't do talk shows or go on Dr. Phil's show. He's a friend of mine, and, no, he doesn't give me any advice. He doesn't give solicited advice.
Somebody the other day had a review, called me 'America's reprobate.' And I don't even know what that means, but I kinda like the way it sounds.
I believe that if life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade... And try to find somebody whose life has given them vodka, and have a party.
I believe everything creative is somewhat collaborative. If you're a painter and someone stretches your canvas, it was collaborative on some level.
The hardest that I've laughed at a movie was probably Team America. I laughed 'til I thought I was just gonna throw up. I almost had to turn it off.
I was a little one-trick pony. I do what I've always done. That's really where my best stuff comes from. I don't know how it happens. It just happens.
I started selling out comedy clubs before I got to town with no advertising. I was selling out theaters just on the rumor that I was going to be there.
Vegas is famous for a lot of things, and bad marriages are one of them. Margo and I are proof that you can make this work. It just takes a little effort.
If you look at the common denominator of all the comics who have had big success, it's being true to their nature... that's what takes a long time to learn.
There are a million really good cigars, you gotta really float around cigars. It's not like being locked into a brand of cigarettes; at least to me it's not.
Ultimately I'm the writer for me, but also, anytime one of my friends gets stuck with a bit, they can call me, and I'm pretty good at helping them get there.
I don't have a specific plan except for as long as people want to listen to me talk, I'm going to keep talking. I can't imagine a life without doing standup.
I don't like to do burnt material on stage. Even though my crowd loves to hear me do old stuff, I don't like to do old stuff. So I do very, very little of it.
As long as I stay engaged with everybody else, then I'll create more comedy. It's just when I shut off and stay at home... What helps me is just to keep moving.
I do a lot of gay-friendly stuff in my show, and men, women, they all love it. I practice non-judgment in my daily life and hope other people do the same thing.
I've asked these guys in rock bands with all the 18-wheelers driving to the venue how they make money. I just don't understand it. But I don't understand a lot of things.
I'm a comedian, and I like to work on my live show, and if I'm doing television, I don't have time to work on my live show, and I can become a lame comic, and that sucks.
I was talking to a guy who was holding his 18-month-old daughter with the only limb he had left, and he had a smile on his face. I thought, 'I'm not even a 10th of this man.'
I was so in love with the idea of making people laugh for a living that I didn't care what I had to do to get there. Or how much money I was going to make when I did get there.
My life has been wild enough to derive all of the stories you need out of it. I've been through many, many years of behavioral problems, so I don't really look outside for stories.
The bulk of my fans are my age, and I'm aging at the same rate they are. That makes me relevant. They like hearing what I have to say. I work hard at it, but it's addicting, really.
I'm definitely guilty of thinking something is funny but thinking the audience won't. Then three years later I will finally try it and it'll kill them. I got to give them more credit.
I don't like to do material people have heard. Now, they like to hear material that they know, because that's the stuff that made me famous, and, unfortunately, I don't do a ton of it.
There have been times when I played more than others, but I've been a road comic for a quarter of a century, so I've always played golf on the road because you have a lot of time to kill.
Pace, rhythm and timing. Pace, rhythm and timing is what it's about. The content's got to be great, but then it's got to be delivered. It's a tricky thing to do, and it takes a lot of work.
I was desperate for new material, so anything I can write a joke about that works is in the act. No matter who it offends, or who it bothers - doesn't matter if its something my wife hates.
I don't know who in my family thinks very fast at all, including me. The things that people see me do onstage are written, so it doesn't have to be very quick if you have all day with a pen.
My uncle was a preacher, and I used to go watch him preach. He was also funny, so I'm very 'preacher-ish' on stage, not by intent but because that's where I learned to talk in front of people.
It never dawned on me that I had the option of becoming a comedian. I come from a little dirt street town in northwest Texas, and they really don't talk about the arts there much on career day.
When I was 20, I used to go around telling stories, and I knew where I was comfortable - onstage, talking, making 'em laugh and listen to the weirdest things. I liked being the center of attention.
There are two kinds of comics; there are the ones who build bridges, and then there are the people who walk across the bridges as though they built them. The bridge builders are few and far between.
I've got a role in the new Billy Bob Thornton movie that Billy Bob wrote and is going to direct called 'Jayne Mansfield's Car.' I only have four scenes, but I have as much dialogue as anybody in the movie.
I really understood a lot more about comedy after listening to Bill Hicks, who died at 32 years old. He's probably the best comedian who ever lived. Although you can't say that because of Carlin, Cosby and Pryor.
The first thing I ever got my hands on was Andy Griffith's 'What It Was, Was Football.' I was fascinated with the fact that every syllable made it funny, and I would laugh even though I didn't know what any of it meant.
But I work harder now because I have so much more exposure. And actually the harder you work as a writer, the better you get at it. It's like anything else. It's a muscle you have to exercise. I write more now than ever.
In my Comedy Club sets, I just work on what is fresh and try to build that show as long as I can. I don't like to do burnt material on stage. Even though my crowd loves to hear me do old stuff, I don't like to do old stuff.
When I was a kid, mostly I played in a ditch that didn't have much water in it. It was for drainage purposes. There was not a lot trouble to get into in that ditch. It was ditch activities like catching crawdads and minnows.
The way my brain processes information is quite odd. I mean, I have Attention Deficit Disorder and another learning disability I can't even spell. I don't even have a high school diploma. I'm smart, but you can't prove it on paper.
There's no idea or concept in comedy you could do that hasn't been attacked from some angle. But if you start leaving punchlines out so you'll look cool, I don't get that. But I don't watch standup anyway, so I don't know what they're doing.
From the very beginning I started with a beer and a cigarette because I couldn't figure out what to do with my hands. So usually I have a beer and cigarette and that's what I was doing with my hands because that looked natural and felt good.
Movies are boring. It's like watching paint dry. I did a little role in a movie, and it was eight lines. I was there for three days. It's just horrible. Television is 15 hour days. Movies are 18 hour days. And it's 18 hours of doing not a thing.
There were years when I was a beer and tequila guy, then I got real fat. And then I found that you could actually go on a diet and drink scotch. Then I got hooked on scotch, and if you get hooked on scotch, then everything else just tastes wrong.
Barbara was actually Jeff Foxworthy's interior designer when we first met. So, not only was Jeff responsible for my success in my career, he also introduced me to the woman who I'm going to spend the rest of my life with, which, I think, makes us even.
I have had a front row seat to observe Darren's success over the last few years and never fully knew the keys to his achievement. He has unselfishly revealed his secrets with The Compound Effect so that others can learn from his success. In my eyes, it is more valuable than gold!
You can tell on-stage when a joke's starting to lose its pop. It doesn't mean people don't want to hear it anymore; it means I don't want to do it anymore. Because I want to move on to something that has a knee-jerk reaction just like you get when you tell somebody a joke that they've never heard.