Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
And then before going back for my sophomore year, I decided to change my major to arts and sciences, and my dad cut a deal with me: He said if I'd quit school he'd pay my rent for the next three years, as if I were in school.
Like I said about Seinfeld and Chris Rock, they're a great combination of brilliance and hard work. [But] there are people who are brilliant and don't work hard, and there are people who are brilliant and sabotage themselves.
We [with Judd Apatow] started talking about ideas and he said, 'Well, I'm going to do this movie Knocked Up with Seth [Rogen], but after that you guys should do a movie together.' I read it and thought that it was very funny.
Before he died, my dad had three primary cancers over 20 years, and for four of those years, he was having chemo every day. We got used to sitting as a family at the table and him not to be able to taste what we were tasting.
I think comedy is no different now than it was at other points. It takes a long time to get good and know how to distill what makes you funny beyond the realm of standup, which is what I'm trying to do with 'Teachers Lounge.'
I didn't want to hear the usual answers about what's wrong because I believe these are symptoms: global warming, genocide, hunger, poverty, war, environmental crisis. If we can identify the root cause, we can change our ways.
For people who have done comedy after a certain point in time, I think there's a base level of, 'O.K., I think I'm decently funny.' But unless you just have some massive ego, I really think you're still fighting against that.
You want to be excited about what you're doing. So whenever I get tired, I think, 'Would ten-year-old Adam be pretty stoked on what I'm doing and what's happening?' So I just live my life as if I'm using my ten-year-old brain.
Be yourself. I had this three-week period where I wore this straw fedora. I thought it was what chicks wanted. And then it dawned on me that I was trying to be something that I wasn't, so I took the fedora off. So be yourself.
The one thing I've found you really can't joke about - and people think it's death or something - is money. No one thinks it's funny, whether you have it or you don't. Money is just something no one seems to like joking about.
One percent of all comics ever reach the level of a Chris Rock or a Jerry Seinfeld. When audiences come to the underground rooms, they have a chance to watch the process that happens along the way - and see the comedians grow.
Education happens to be something that all people, all cultures, need to embrace. Math, science, the words of the world. To be able to speak and be able to have clarity and to be able to think. Those are the greatest of gifts.
I love talking about the Kennedy assassination. The reason I do is because I'm fascinated by it. I'm fascinated that our government could lie to us so blatantly, so obviously for so long, and we do absolutely nothing about it.
There's a word the teabaggers have wanted to use since Obama came on the scene, but they can't because it's not the 1950s. They would love to say this word. It begins with an N and ends with -er, and it's not "nation-builder."
My thinking is, government is really there to do the things that people absolutely can't do for themselves. And that's mostly involved with the things that might kill you. And what might kill me? The environment and terrorism.
I think comedy has a range, with multiple peaks in different areas. It's like trying to compare Beethoven and the Beatles. Sometimes I hear from people, 'I think you try too hard in your comedy.' And that's what I worry about.
I jog, actually; I go at night. A lot of women, they don't like to go jogging alone at night. They're afraid they might get accosted. I go naked. That way, if there are any perverts around, they think I'm already being chased.
I will make a joke about any of my family members, about me, about my wife, if I really thought that I'm doing it to be funny. If there's some darkness to it, or I think it's ill-willed or mean or not cool, then I won't do it.
There are certain parts of a classic nerd's brain that can destroy that person - obsessing about things to the detriment of everything else in your life. But those are the same tools that you can use to turn everything around.
I've seen nerdists make tributes to their obsessions out of Legos that are like works of art. It just goes to show you how pervasive this stuff has become in our culture. It really is an ideology that you can subscribe to now.
The biggest myth about fatherhood that you get given a direct phone number to talk to Santa and tell him how your kid has been behaving. Absolute bullshit. I got an email address and it's just giving me an out of office reply.
I was making pancakes the other day and a fly flew into the kitchen. And that's when I realized that a spatula is a lot like a fly-swatter. And a crushed fly is a lot like a blueberry. And a roommate is a lot like a fly eater.
'Sort of' is such a harmless thing to say... sort of. It's just a filler. Sort of... it doesn't really mean anything. But after certain things, sort of means everything. Like... after "I love you"... or "You're going to live."
THING TO TRY: If you are asked to describe a suspect to a police sketch artist, describe in precise detail, the features of the police sketch artist. This is one of the rare instances where two people can do one self-portrait.
The terror of failure can make you feel like a failure. So a bunch of people think you're not very good at your thing. How much do you invest in what they say? How much do you care? Failure is not putting yourself on the line.
I draw hundreds and hundreds of pictures of sort of gnarly looking men, so I don't know what that tells you. People who look like... they're waiting for a sandwich that's never going to come. I don't know what's wrong with me.
No matter how much makeup I wore, people just kept saying "Yes, sir! Would you like tea with that, sir?" "Yes, I would like tea. Why don't you put it on my breasts?" "Certainly. Tea for this man's breasts! Anything else, sir?"
When I was seven, I said, "I want to act." When I was 10, I realized that films exist, and I wanted to be in them. Not a comedian, I wanted to be a dramatic actor. Films just seemed such fun, and like such a great thing to do.
I loved the idea of Bowie as an artist, with his Burroughsian cut-up technique, creating these undecipherable, abstract songs, where we all projected our own meanings onto his jarring word choices and unexpected chord changes.
I don't like the fact that most black people or black comedians have to present themselves in a flamboyant way. It's good if you can do that, but I don't like to think that's the way all black comedians are. I'm not that type.
Since I've made it to 87 so far, obviously my two kids and my seven grandchildren haven't been too hard on me. On the other hand, the fact that I have an unlisted phone number and move a lot might have something to do with it.
All the wrong things for all the wrong reasons. Sometimes people just want to feel different. And so long as Third World peasants are poor they will send us drugs, and as long as we are empty we will ask for this little plant.
Shopping and buying and getting and having comprise the Great American Addiction. No one is immune. When the underclass riots in this country they don't kill policemen and politicians, they steal merchandise. How embarrassing.
I'm not so interested in what movie a celebrity is promoting or what television show might be premiering. I'm more interested in, 'Does Channing Tatum know how to do laundry?' I guess the more simple, personal sides of people.
A lady came up to me on the street and pointed at my suede jacket. 'You know a cow was murdered for that jacket?' she sneered. I replied in a psychotic tone, 'I didn't know there were any witnesses. Now I'll have kill you too.
Hundreds of barefoot Filipinos marched on the roads through the Philippines carrying heavy wooden crosses and whipping their backs until they bled to prepare for Easter. Call me old-fashioned but I just like coloring the eggs.
Comedy is the only profession where love from a stranger is better than love from a family member. You need to perform for strangers to see if you're really funny. If they laugh and cheer, it's the greatest thing in the world.
You never know anymore if you'll see something you don't want to see, if you're jealous of something, if you're going through a breakup and you see something, so I just don't even look at those things any more [ in Instagram].
There is no such thing as an attention span. There is only the quality of what you are viewing. This whole idea of an attention span is, I think, a misnomer. People have an infinite attention span if you are entertaining them.
People don't think of their office as a workplace anymore. They think of it as a stationary store with Danish. You want to get your pastry, your envelopes, your supplies, your toilet paper, six cups of coffee, and you go home.
Why do you have to be out of town to write a postcard? I want a to write a postcard to my neighbor: "I still live near you!" The guy sees me go into my apartment, flips the card over, it's just a picture of me holding a rifle.
God, do I hate my little fat tits. You ever pinch your little meat tits and wish you were dead? You ever just stand naked in the mirror. "You little fat-titted mediocre failure!" You ever do that for 3 hours on New Year's Eve.
I don't watch too much television because I want to write something, and you never want to be influenced by other things that are on - and if they're really funny it'll just depress me because it's something I'm not a part of.
The British media is sinking down, as the American news media has lowered the bar for all of humanity. British news media is definitely trying to stoop down to that level. Everyone is stooping to the lowest common denominator.
In improv, the whole thing is that it is a relationship between the two people, as a back and forth. In standup, you don't really want to be listening to what somebody is saying; you want to project your jokes into their face.
There are so many low points with stand-up. You are perpetually humiliated, so it doesn't really matter anymore. I don't have any dignity left to lose. An audience can’t hurt you anymore when you’ve been completely dismantled.
There are so many low points with stand-up. You are perpetually humiliated, so it doesn't really matter anymore. I don't have any dignity left to lose. An audience can't hurt you anymore when you've been completely dismantled.
I usually think to do pep talks on Twitter if I'm on the road, at home and my girlfriend is out of town, or if I'm at home and up later then my girlfriend and our dog Bizzy - like, if they're both asleep but I'm kind of wired.
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.