Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
You can't kill America. We're more than a nation. We're a notion. We're an idea. The American Dream. You never heard of the Afghanistani Dream have you. Except by bearded hermetic recluses with a fetish for uneducated women dressed as giant shuttlecocks.
That's what I think works the best, and what I think makes the best comedy - something that's completely committed and more approached as an acting exercise, as opposed to being worried about whether to be funny or not. The comedy comes from the context.
I didn't feel like I was putting anything good into the world, even though it was funny. I wanted to do something more positive that would have an impact. So even when I'm doing naked push-ups or whatever, it's astounding to see how people respond to it.
I didn't understand NASCAR until I met some NASCAR fans. You talk to a couple of NASCAR fans and you'll see where a shiny car driving in a circle would fascinate them all day. And I can make fun of NASCAR fans, because if they chase me, I just turn right.
Hostess Bakery plants shut down due to a workers' strike. It was split up. The State Department hired all the Twinkies, the Secret Service hired all the HoHos, the generals are sleeping with the Cupcakes and the voters sent all the Ding Dongs to Congress.
You can't erase Bill Cosby's contributions. That's the conflict. He's one of the most influential comedians of all time, and 'The Cosby Show' is one of the most influential sitcoms ever. When I watched as a kid, I wanted Cliff to be my dad. Everybody did.
I mean, stand up you're by yourself and it's live and when you're acting, unless you're doing a monologue, you're interacting with somebody else. Even if you're doing a monologue you're saying it to somebody and it's not live so you can do it a few times.
I don't have a problem believing in God and Jesus. But in Genesis one has to wonder about these sentences that just go on and end without finishing. The thought is unfinished. Where did Adam go? What is he doing? Hello? There has to be some pages missing.
In September of 1960, I was blessed - and I'm not saying blessed in the everyday religious way - when Temple University accepted me after scoring 500 on the SAT. I was 23 years old, and they put me in remedial. I was the happiest remedial person on earth.
I go "I just want a cup of black coffee." She goes "Do you want to try a biscotti? They're from Italy and they're considered a delicacy." Have you ever eaten one of these things? It tastes like a burned cookie. Where I'm from, that's considered a mistake.
Next week John Boehner will be sitting behind Barack Obama at the State of the Union address. I think Obama should purposely try to embarrass him by telling the story of 'Old Yeller.' The state of our Union is strong, but not so good for one special dog.'
I would say don't take advice from people like me who have gotten very lucky. We're very biased. You know, like Taylor Swift telling you to follow your dreams is like a lottery winner telling you, 'Liquidize your assets; buy Powerball tickets - it works!'
Baseball is a soap opera that plays out day after day, one that a lot of elderly women watch until the characters and the plot becomes a part of their life. She got to enjoy the personal side of the players. They were her kids. The Braves were her family.
You can never go wrong betting on Americans' bad eating habits. So I've made a ton investing in all fast food chains, while at the same time investing in Dockers, spandex, Spanx, and sweatpants. Basically, anything with an elastic waistband is a goldmine.
I definitely don't want to have kids ... I don't think I'd be a great mother. I'm a great aunt or friend of a mother ... I don't want to spend that kind of time. I don't want to have a kid and have it raised by a nanny. I don't have time to raise a child.
There's no control in life, is there? There's only one who's in control, and He'll take me when He wants me. I don't want to know about it. It's none of my business. But when it happens, I just ask that it won't be painful and that He forgives me my sins.
When there's someone who's dead and then someone does something that that person would not have liked, they say that that person is spinning in their grave. But I don't understand why they say that. Why is spinning the way that a corpse shows disapproval?
Scientists have just built the world's biggest supercollider, and they're doing experiments to see what makes up protons. I hope that if the experiment's successful, the whole of our reality will dissolve, and a big sign will up come that says: Level Two.
The worst thing about e-mail is that you can’t interrupt the other person. You have to read the whole thing and then e-mail them back, pointing out all their mistakes and faulty assumptions. It’s frustrating and it’s time-consuming. God bless phone calls.
I tried to be as thorough as I can, but there is a responsibility that we all have, especially with something like AA which is dependant on anonymity. Once you start banging on about it the whole time, you are potentially damaging the whole concept of it.
I'm crazy about the fact that the Jewish people should survive because they have so much to contribute and so many values to contribute to the world. It would be a much better world, a much more peaceful and non-violent world if we lived by Jewish values.
Let's put it this way: I don't have a good work ethic. I have a real casual relationship with hours. I don't understand why, in entertainment, the hours are as long as they are. It seems like everything takes forever, and no one can tell you why, exactly.
Scientists are complaining that the new dinosaur movie shows dinosaurs with lemurs, who didn't evolve for another million years. They're afraid the movie will give kids a mistaken impression. What about the fact that the dinosaurs are singing and dancing?
Jesse Jackson also said he thought Barack Obama was talking down to black people by lecturing them on things like fatherhood and being a responsible husband. Jesse thought it was insulting, not only to him, but to his former mistress and their love child.
A number of plastic surgeons are claiming that looking at John Kerry now, as opposed to a few months ago, they believe he's had Botox shots. They claim a number of his worry lines have vanished. They haven't vanished, just Howard Dean is wearing them now.
Admittedly, the masturbation story is just a "Hey, this is one of my best-of's, I'll throw it in the special." But the grandmother stuff, really, I feel like is part of the theme and part of the best way to end the story that I'm telling with the special.
I'll take anyone I can get that will pay money to see me. And if there's more of me in the world, people who think they're good people and comedians who have a good message or whatever, then that's great. If there's some kind of balance there that's good.
All socialists have bad backs because we slouch - except when we're watching the news when we sit on the edge of our seats, shout, and wave our arms. Generally we sit hunched, arms crossed in a judgemental way, the whole of our bodies pulled into a frown.
The film I did with Bobby De Niro, 'The King of Comedy' - an awful lot came to me out of that movie because De Niro never allowed me any room to be crazy. If I had tried to play it the way I would normally play it and get hysterical, Bobby would punch me.
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.
If I see someone not laughing, the first thing I'm thinking is, "OK, am I cursing too much? Am I doing a joke he doesn't understand? Is he resting?" Then he starts becoming my focal point. Once I see him laugh, I'm like, [snap] "All right, now I'm funny."
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.
There's been a lot of simple vilification of right-wing people. It's really easy to say, 'Well, you're Christian, you're anti-this and that, and I hate you.' But to me, it's more interesting to say, 'What is this person like and how do they really think?'
I get the Reese's candy bar. You look at that, there's an apostrophe-s there. That means the candy bar is his. I didn't know that. Next time you're eating a Reese's candy bar, and a guy named Reese comes by and says, "Gimme that", you better hand it over.
Everyone has some secret and some source of pain or sadness and I just said mine first and then everybody went after me. I get it every day in my Instagram direct messages, people thanking me for talking about depression and telling me how it helped them.
I don't really like politics that much. And I like the order and simplicity of sports. They have an ending. You can argue with your friends about it, but in the end you still like sports. I almost love the fantasy world of sports more than the real world.
In Canada you grow up - we're next to the United States. We're watching whatever you're watching. We're following your news. It's obvious that we are inundated with American cultural information and political information. Whereas the opposite is not true.
I didn't have toys and bikes; I'd go out and pick up rocks. I was into science and nature. It was my first love. I was going to be a vet and a marine biologist. I went to university and studied biology for two weeks and I just thought: "I've been conned!"
While I do occasionally order items on the Internet, it's hard to teach an old shopper new tricks. I'm convinced that the catalogue will eventually disappear, but not until the last baby boomers have kicked off their smelly Nikes and been buried in mulch.
I hate moaning comics, but I do find it very frustrating when I switch on BBC Four or BBC Two to find they're repeating some piece of crap sitcom. I think: Why don't they show mine? Not because I'd make any money, it would just be nice for it to be shown.
In Australia, a deaf person attending an interview must take their own interpreter at their own expense, or ask the employer to provide one. Believe me, nothing says 'I'm the best person for this job' quite like asking an employer to pay to interview you.
Honestly, I just go to restaurants to eat so I won't die. If there was a pill I could take in January and then I wouldn't have to eat again for the rest of the year, I would take it. Of course, I wouldn't want to sacrifice my chocolate cake and ice cream.
My most visceral childhood memory is getting home from hockey. Much of our family time revolved around hockey, and it rains a lot in Perth, and we'd get home tired and wet in our tracksuits, and the smell I'd hold in my nose is of mother's vegetable soup.
I don't think one gets to choose the kind of comedy he/she does. I may not talk about Rahul Gandhi's take on an ordinance, but I will talk about things as simple as a 'chappal' or a 'sherwani.' My comedy is about small things, and that is how it connects.
There's so many good comedians in D.C. I started hanging out with those guys. Dave Chappelle was there. Actually, Dave was too young to be in the clubs, so when his mom couldn't make it, he would ask me to pretend I was his aunt, so he could do open mike.
I've always been noted for being original and doing different thing. So for me to hop on the train that's going on would be - shoot, if I wanted to hop on the train, I might as well have hopped on gangsta rap back when it was popular and tried to do that.
When I auditioned for 'Pitch Perfect,' I didn't know it was a singing movie. I didn't read the script. I go to the audition, and I'm like, 'Oh, it's a baseball movie.' But then I'm reading the lines, and I'm like, 'This doesn't seem like a baseball movie.'
The Mars Rover sent back stunning photos [last week] indicating the past presence of water. The pictures show tiny splotches of blue on the Red Planet. The other theory is that the satellite dish on the rover accidentally picked up CNN's election coverage.