Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Part of our job is to dig deep and rediscover the joy that we had when we were first starting out. Also, when you gain responsibility, if you are the host of a TV show and you have responsibilities as a producer and a writer and so forth, you then have to deal with the mechanics of it, which is not always fun.
I think when Justin Trudeau tweets - and Justin Trudeau tweets just like Donald Trump tweets. He occasionally just tweets things. And when he tweets that we're welcoming everyone, I mean, we're not a utopia for immigration as well. I mean, we have all sorts of issues that are very similar to the United States.
Next time someone tells me they believe in God, I'll say 'Oh which one? Zeus? Hades? Jupiter? Mars? Odin? Thor? Krishna? Vishnu? Ra?...' If they say 'Just God. I only believe in the one God,' I'll point out that they are nearly as atheistic as me. I don't believe in 2,870 gods, and they don't believe in 2,869.
When I first became famous in the United Kingdom it was helpful because it meant there wasn't a spite of 'this bloke's a drug addict,' 'this bloke f**ks all these women' because I was just making jokes about all those things already, so it made me some kind of incorruptible indefatigable, indestructible force.
I think there are a lot of things out there that are humorous that people don't realize until you actually show them what is going on. Saran Wrap for one thing. You know, you could pull enough of that out of the box and it will actually kill you. It will get a hold of you, stick to you, and choke you to death.
I'm not a confrontational person or comedian. I think we can explore more things if one of us is not fighting with the other. I take it easy. But I do like comedians who are very different from myself: I love dry comics with deadpan one-liners. I look on and think, 'That's amazing; why didn't I think of that?'
Chennai is one of the scariest crowds to face. Everyone looks so conservative, but once you crack the first joke, they are so appreciatively loud that they will hit you with a laugh that will scare you stiff and yet give you energy. Chennaiites give me the loudest laughs; it's the coolest crowd to perform for.
There's obviously a group who enjoys what Tyler Perry is putting out there. And why fault them? And there's a group that loves the things that Spike does. So they should enjoy that, too. Is it my taste? Maybe not, but I'm not going to fault anybody for doing what they're doing as long as people are showing up.
I have feelings that are to the right, and I have feelings that land on the left side of the aisle. The thing is if you have 10 views that land you on the left side of the aisle and two views that land you on the right side of the aisle, then people just put you on the right side of the aisle. I'm not sure why.
I'm glad mushrooms are against the law, because I took them one time, and you know what happened to me? I laid in a field of green grass for four hours going, "My God! I love everything." Yeah, now if that isn't a hazard to our country... How are we gonna justify arms dealing when we realize that we're all one?
I was watching Maury Povich the other day. He had these people on who say that they've had near death experiences. Do you ever notice they always say the same thing? 'I remember seeing this really bright, white light.' It's like, of course, you pinhead, it's the paramedic looking in your pupils with a penlight.
I've always wanted to do a segment on a talk show. Jay Leno has been such a good friend, and if he would allow me, I'd have to get it all together, but I'd like to go on 'The Tonight Show' and do a set with no props. Or come out with a trunk and never touch it. Or come out with a clear trunk with nothing in it.
You can't have an honest fourth grade school teacher. Mr. and Mrs. Jones, Johnny, your son, your only child, the fruit of your loin, is a moron. I have no idea how this kid finds a door to get out of the house in the morning. If I were you, I would waste him and start over. Now, I say that with all due respect.
I find that an entertainer is quite content to sit still, and I think an artist always has a little motion, always going somewhere. May not know where it is, but there is some sort of unnamed destination. There is some pulling, some movement. So I just found myself in that category according to my own analysis.
This parrot is no more. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to meet its maker. This is a late parrot. It's a stiff. Bereft of life, it rests in peace. If you hadn't nailed it to the perch, it would be pushing up the daisies. It's rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is an ex-parrot.
There's been times where I sold the place out, and I walked in and the guy's like, 'Uh, ID?' 'No, you can't ID me, man. I just sold this place out.' People are just doing their jobs, but I think if you're working the door at a venue where there's a headliner, you should at least be like, 'OK, this is the dude.'
Anthony Weiner deserves to be supported and hopefully he will be mayor of New York one day. I'm serious. He is a Democrat [who] actually fights for the things liberals and progressive and rational people care about. I don't know why he's being thrown under the bus. He hasn't done any - he hasn't broke any laws.
This week the White House proposed fingerprinting and photographing foreign visitors so they can do background checks. Officials in Saudi Arabia said this will only increase anti-American feelings in the Mideast. Is that possible? Gee, you hate to have people dislike us for no reason. Things were going so well.
It's not my dreams that get me in trouble, it's what my wife dreams I did. My wife punched me in the middle of the night; I woke up and went Oww! What was that for?, and she goes I dreamt you were making out with Faith Hill. I said I wasn't dreaming anything! Send her over to my dreams, and we'll both be happy.
When I write, I lose time. I'm happy in a way that I have a hard time finding in real life. The intimacy between my brain and my fingers and my computer... Yet knowing that that intimacy will find an audience... It's very satisfying. It's like having the safety of being alone with the ego reward of being known.
Movie acting is harder than doing a play. You have to be entertaining but completely natural, like Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant. They weren't doing anything. Do you have any idea how hard that is? That's how good they were. It's crazy hard to be convincing and real. It's the most subtle, hardest thing there is.
When you're confined to a hospital bed, there aren't many appointments you can make. You await visits from friends and family members. You enjoy the coconut ice cream they smuggle in. You tolerate the erratic and invasive visits of doctors and nurses, hoping that one of them will bring you closer to going home.
People ask, like, 'How are you going to incorporate what you do onstage into everything else?' I'm not too worried about that. Whether it's theater or a TV show idea, or an animated thing or, I don't know, an animated screensaver. I really just want to keep creating things. And I've always been able to do that.
The terrible thing in England is if you interview a thousand people, five hundred of them will talk like they're going into a Guy Ritchie movie and the other five hundred will be Mr. Darcy. So we had to find cool, working class kids with no profile who could be John Travolta and James Dean and people like that.
Where's our Paul Newmans? Where's our Robert Redfords? We've got Jason Statham, who is great... blue collar and cool, which is fantastic. And we've got Hugh Grant, which is great. But where's this crossover, this blue collar guy who is cool? Where is our James Dean? Where is our John Travolta and Steve McQueen?
When we [adoption agency] have a birth mother who is pregnant and she doesn't know the race of the father, she is using drugs, and she is in crisis, usually we cannot place that baby with a heterosexual family. Almost all of the times when we have a drug-addicted child, we place the baby in a homosexual family.
When I started on the London circuit in 1989, nationwide there were about 150 to 200 people that were what you could call alternative comedians - that weren't club comics. Now, last year when the Laughing Horse chain of clubs held a new acts competition, a thousand people entered. So, there are 800 people more.
I may go back and spice it up with a little bit of the tool stuff and grunting and all that that I know so well. But it feels like I'm rehashing old material. And some of my audiences like that. So I'm there to entertain. I'm not there to make a political statement or anything like that. I'm there to entertain.
The word contentment comes from the word content, which is what we hold inside - love, value, a feeling of a life that has meaning or purpose, a cause greater than yourself that you're a part of. These are the things that bring true happiness. As a culture, I think we need to redefine what it means to be happy.
People say to me all the time, "I get my news from your show." And that isn't the way they should get their news. But the choice is not between getting their news the right way and getting their news from my show. The choice is that they won't get any at all unless you give it to them in an entertaining package.
You can't touch the strippers. Why are you paying to not touch someone? That is weird. How do you win in that situation? That is like walking into a deli, starving, and being like, 'Here's $300 - can I stare at the roast beef? Better yet, I'll sit down in this chair and you can mash it around my mouth and balls.
I think it just really excites me, the idea of delving so far into a character that people actually believe it's real, and I start to believe it's real. It's a strange thing to say, but it's the thrill of getting all the details right and being so absorbed in the character that people go along with the illusion.
There are jokes I know I want to tell, and there's sort of a rough order, but usually I try to change it up every show, to improvise and talk with the audience. I think when you tell jokes, if you're not careful, you can end up telling the whole list of jokes and then that's it. And that can get a little boring.
I think abortion's wrong, but it's none of my business to tell somebody what's wrong, he said. So I'm pro-choice. I want to keep my nose out of other people's personal business. I guess I fall into conservative when it comes to protecting the United States in a world where a lot of people hate the United States.
Many, many years ago, I stood on the stage and told bad jokes and did Sophie Tucker as an impersonation, and nobody looked up; and suddenly, I looked down and said, 'Sir, I'm getting fed up with you. Either you watch, or I'm going to suck your neck,' or words to that effect, and suddenly people started to laugh.
People love their animals so much so that they put little clothes on them and necklaces and booties and things like that. And if you love your animal, then you should feed them something that's not dangerous for them. There's a lot of poisonous stuff that they're putting in a lot of that food, those by-products.
Only the British could experience great pain at the thought of a traffic jam - a place where you can sit alone with your radio on without being expected to do any work. Aren't traffic jams unbearable? By the time you get home, you need to sit alone in a comfy chair with your favourite music on just to calm down.
My first 'Tonight Show' was just one of those things - I mean this seriously - a cosmic, meant-to-be coming together of circumstance. You walk out there to do your first 'Tonight Show': Is the audience going to be hot? Are you going to be on fire? It's like an athlete: Are you going to have your moves at a peak?
And speaking of sex, the Immaculate Conception does not mean Jesus was conceived in the absence of sex. It means Mary was conceived without Original Sin. That's all it has ever meant. And according to the tabloids, Mary is apparently the only one who can make such a claim. The Jesus thing is called virgin birth.
One of the interesting things about "outsidership" is that underneath it there's a longing to belong. I just wish the thing I refused to belong to - the species, Western capital culture - was a little more respectable. My one true relaxation is my flotation tank, in which I can either meditate or just drift off.
I always wish the hotels were like they are in movies and TV shows, where if you're in Paris, right outside your window is the Eiffel Tower. In Egypt, the pyramids are right there. In the movies, every hotel has a monument right outside your window. My hotel rooms overlook the garbage dumpster in the back alley.
If a comedian tells a joke that you find funny, you laugh. If he tells a joke you do not find funny, dont laugh. Or you could possibly go as far as groaning or rolling your eyes. Then you wait for his next joke; if thats funny, then you laugh. If its not, you dont laugh - or at very worst, you can leave quietly.
I don't like when people say, 'I'll pray for you. I'm going to pray for you. Praying for you.' You're going to pray for me? So you're going to sit at home and do nothing? 'Cause that's what your prayers are; you doing nothing while I struggle with a situation. Don't pray for me - make me a sandwich or something.
The Olympics start on Friday, and Russia is implementing the most intensive security in Olympics history. During the games, the government will monitor every email, every social media message, and listen in on every phone call. In fact, people are even comparing Russia to the United States, that's how bad it is.
Texas Governor Rick Perry now says his wife has been encouraging him to run for President. Remember first he told us God told him to run; now his wife is telling him to run. Of course, the big difference; if you ignore what God says you don't have to hear about it until the afterlife. That's the only difference.
The young man who's had the Guggenheim fortune behind him all his life - he can hire all the authorities on the subject to teach him how to do a monologue, but he's never going to have the right stuff to pull it off. If he doesn't walk out onstage needing to walk out there, he doesn't have a dream of doing well.
I am in no doubt that if you use the term 'luv' in a letter or text message then you are incapable of truly understanding the emotion. Artists have not pored over heartache and unrequited sentimentality for years so that our generation could decide that four letters is simply one too many to express how we feel.
Everyone wants something that'll appeal to, like, 13-year-olds to 18-year-olds. Especially working in television and trying to pitch shows, they're like, 'We definitely want something that a 14-year-old will be, like, super-psyched about.' And I'm like, 'I don't know if my reality is appealing to a 14-year-old.'
I was in Toronto when they had a severe outbreak of SARS - you know, Severe Asian Racism Syndrome. I was in the airport and there were these big snowboarder guys and they had white masks around their necks, and as soon as they saw me, they put their masks on. So I went "cough, cough, cough... You wanna egg rorr?
Successful writers say you should never work from a desk with a view, and the view I have from this one is a huge distraction. There's a garden bursting with fresh vegetation, and just beyond the high wall at the end of it, I can see the sign of the local pub across the road. Distractions, eh? I'm so easily led.