Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm sure that like anybody else, I'm probably the sum total of my life experiences. If I'm smart and I've gained any wisdom, I have learned something from each of those experiences including different jobs I've taken throughout my life. The problem is, sometimes you don't realize you've learned something until maybe years later.
It turns out most of the conclusions that I've come to in life have equally valid contradictions. I think it's true you need to make a plan, set a goal and stick to it, but I would also advise: Don't keep your eyes so fixed on your goal that you miss what sneaks up to surprise you, because magic will come from unexpected places.
[ My mother] went, OK, I've read the Bible. I've read the Bible again. I'm reading the Bible again. OK, let me - where does this Bible come from? What does this Old Testament speak - who are the Israelites? Who - what is Judaism? And then she went, and I'm going to study that. And, you know, she wanted to almost get to the core.
I never thought that I would become a staple in the Australian cultural diet. The equivalent of bread or milk, or a fine old Tasmanian Mauve Vein. I think it's because I talk about things that people dare not mention. I don't mean raunchy things or unsavoury things. I call a spade a spade - I discuss things in a realistic manner.
They tell us "Rock'n'roll is the devil's music." Well, let's say we know that rock is the devil's music, and we know that it is, for sure ... At least he f-kin' jams! If it's a choice between eternal Hell and good tunes, and eternal Heaven and New Kids on the f-kin' Block ... I'm gonna be surfin' on the lake of fire, rockin' out.
I'm always excited about my upcoming shows. I love what I do; I feel very lucky to be able to do what I do, and I never get tired of it. Every time I'm backstage before a show and I feel the murmur of the crowd, it's just incredibly exciting. And I consider myself very fortunate to be able to do this for a job. It's a great life.
We were Orthodox Jews, but we really didn't deserve it. I mean, bacon - my father said, 'Don't put bacon in the house,' but we had bacon. We didn't keep kosher. And we observed which today would be Conservative Jews. But in those days, we belonged to an Orthodox temple. So we made out we were Orthodox Jews, but we really weren't.
Comedy is grievances. It's a recitation of grievances - whether they're inconsequential, superficial - like "my wife shops too much", or "kids today", all those old-fashioned themes - or, if it's deeper, and somewhat more thoughtful, about social imbalance and inequities, and the folly of human behavior. It's usually a complaint.
What we put into every moment is all we have. You can drug yourself to death or you can smoke yourself to death or eat yourself to death, or you can do everything right and be healthy and then get hit by a car. Life is so great, such a neat thing, and yet all during it we have to face death, which can make you nuts and depressed.
I think that all good, right thinking people in this country are sick and tired of being told that all good, right thinking people in this country are fed up with being told that all good, right thinking people in this country are fed up with being sick and tired. I'm certainly not, and I'm sick and tired of being told that I am.
I used to have costumed characters come out, like SpongeBob. It's just fun to make it into this minor event, just to surprise people and experiment and be weird and just have fun with it. I've done just the hour stand-up, and that's fun, but the other stuff makes it fun for me and gives me something to react to and bounce off of.
The New York Times is reporting that back in the '60s, presidential candidate Howard Dean used a letter from a doctor about a back condition to keep himself out of the draft in Vietnam and then spent 10 months skiing. Well it sounds like he's done the impossible. He actually made Bill Clinton and George Bush look like war heroes.
Services were held today for Ken Lay - convicted thief and crook Ken Lay.They folded his arms across his chest and sowed his sleeves together so he couldn't put his hands in anyone's pockets when they walked by. You know when they say in a eulogy, "You're all richer for having known him." I don't think they're going to hear that.
General Colin Powell shocked a lot of people in Washington by speaking out against President Bush's policies, saying that the world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism. That's what I think he said - it was hard to hear him because he was being hustled out of the room to his cell in Guantanamo Bay.
Did you see those Iraqis making that pilgrimage slashing their foreheads with knives and whipping their backs with chains. See, when Saddam Hussein was around they weren't allowed to make that pilgrimage. If they tried that with Saddam Hussein, he would have slashed their foreheads with knives and whipped their backs with chains.
All the great game show hosts have a signature 'look,' from Bob Barker's year-round Brazil Nut-hued tan to Monty Hall's oversized lamb chop sideburns. As the host of IFC's new comedy game show 'Bunk,' I, too, have worked to develop a style signature by being the first man or woman in TV history to host every show in my bare feet!
I think the problems with comedians that are political, and there are some brilliant ones, are the ones that offer no solutions. Not that there's a moral obligation for a comic to fix things, but I like to see a comic that's upset about something and offer a solution. It can be a funny solution. I like to see the thought process.
I have a basic theorem as to how I do my jokes. Growing up, I knew when to cross the line and when not to cross the line. It's the same with my comedy. I know what my audience will take and how much they won't take. I can't give you a formula for it. It's my own personal formula inside my head. Somebody else's might be different.
I think probably one of the coolest things was when I went to play basketball at Rucker Park in Harlem. First of all, who would think that Larry the Cable Guy would go to Harlem to play basketball? And I was received like a rock star. It was amazing! There were people everywhere. There were guys walking by yelling, 'Git 'r done!'
Iranians and Arabs aren't considered diversity because we still don't have minority status in America. There was a group of Middle Eastern actors trying to get SAG to recognize us as part of the diversity they should look out for, because we do represent a different point of view. When OscarsSoWhite happened, I felt part of that.
I think a rotisserie is like a really morbid ferris wheel for chickens. It’s a strange piece of machinery . . . We will take the chicken, kill it, impale it, and then rotate it. And I’ll be damned if I’m not hungry! Because spinning chicken carcasses make my mouth water! I like dizzy chicken. With a side of potatoes of some sort.
Teenagers don't know what love is. They have mixed-up ideas. They go for a drive and the boy runs out of gas and they smooch a little and the girl says she loves him. That isn't love. Love is when you are married twenty-five years, smooching in your living room and he runs out of gas and she says she still loves him. That's love.
You know, in Los Angeles, you're constantly in your car, you're sealed up, you're not walking around. Whereas in New York, after a while, all your stuff is kind of public, in one way or the other. I'm not saying either one of those is bad; they're both great for a very specific kind of comedian. And I'm glad that they both exist.
Oscar Wilde quite rightly said, 'All art is useless'. And that may sound as if that means it's something not worth supporting. But if you actually think about it, the things that matter in life are useless. Love is useless. Wine is useless. Art is the love and wine of life. It is the extra, without which life is not worth living.
History is not the story of strangers, aliens from another realm; it is the story of us had we been born a little earlier. History is memory; we have to remember what it is like to be a Roman, or a Jacobite or a Chartist or even - if we dare, and we should dare - a Nazi. History is not abstraction, it is the enemy of abstraction.
For other comics, it's about full-spectrum dominance, being on panel shows and having one-liners and being a good chat show guest and having a good seven minutes you can do on 'Live At The Apollo.' But I really think about these subsequent finished pieces, you know? And they don't always chop up well into one-liners and routines.
A lot of black people worked with the police as snitches. We used to call them bimpees where I grew up. And, you know, they were afforded special privileges. They may have been paid by the police. But you never knew who was informing on you. We lived either next door to or - two doors away from us was a known informant in Soweto.
The shuttle is the worst $20 you'll ever save. It adds 90 minutes to whatever a Town Car or cab would have been. You have the unenviable choice between being dropped off last or being dropped off first and having a bunch of losers who can't afford cab fare and have no friends or loved ones with cars knowing exactly where you live.
I'm not going out and hitting a 95-mph fastball where I can't see the stitches. I'm not on a professional football team looking to tackle a fullback who is built like solid wood. I'm a thinking person, and I've been blessed with the ability to see some things and talk about them in a way that registers in a humorous and funny way.
I equals all of the ifs added up over time. The ifs, those are the possibilities; that's infinite for all of us. Every day there are just millions of them. Time, that's finite for each of us; there is no question there. Maybe if you divide choices by the amount of time you have, the real I can emerge, depending upon those choices.
Now here's what I'm saying: I've always believed that every other month we hear about compromisation of bank records, I think that's the CIA and the FBI. Now let me tell you why I'm saying this. I don't believe no insignificant pip-squeak is going to be able to pull this off month after month and we can't find out what's going on.
I'm quite good at taking in information so I voraciously inhale Wikipedia - which may have some things wrong in it, but I think is generally more information than we had before. Last tour we didn't have Wikipedia. And then Discovery Channel and History Channel. I can take it in and retain what I think are the most important facts.
We fear the arrival of immigrants that we have drawn here with the wealth we stole from them. For much of the rest of the world we must be the focus of bitter amusement, characters in a satire we don't understand. It is British people that don't learn languages, or British history. Britain is the true scrounger, the true criminal.
I tend not to trust people who live in very tidy houses. I know that on the surface there is nothing wrong with a person being well-ordered and disciplined. Nothing, except that it leaves the impression of that person having lived in the confines of a stark institution which, although he or she has long since left, remains within.
I watched the Oscars, but there wasn't a side of me that was like "Oh, one day..." It was mostly "This is what I want to do, and how do I do it?" As soon as I decided that I was going to be an actor, for about five years after that, I just decided to not do much acting. It was like "Okay, this is what you're going to be later on."
We’re built to deal with death, disease, failure, struggle, heartbreak, problems. It’s what separates us from the animals and why we envy and love animals so much. We’re aware of it all and have to process it. The way we each handle being human is where all the good stories, jokes, art, wisdom, revelations, and bullshit come from.
Now a 'funnyman' can get a laugh before opening his mouth - looking funny. Lou Costello was one of your great funnymen. Harry Langdon, Larry Semon; they were all funnymen - they looked funny. W.C. Fields was never a comedian. Slim Summerville was a comedian, yet looked funny. Now if you have both attributes, you are in good shape.
I used to be married to a pastor, and I had a church for two years. Pastors are just men, too, with a different job description than others. We're all called to bear one another's burdens. We're all called to pray for the sick. They do it on a larger scale, but they're just a man. A lot of women don't think that. Trust me. I know.
I'm not going to have the TV personality and be like, 'There's no bitterness. There's no ugliness.' There's bitterness. There's ugliness. There's pain. There's greed. There's malice, and there's hurt. That's all good stuff for any kind of art. I'm not necessarily feeding that side of myself, and I try not to encourage it too much.
My average fan works for about $20 per hour, if they are lucky enough to have a job. And then factoring in insurance, taxes and such, they're maybe bringing home $15 per hour. If my tickets are just under $30, it took them about two hours of their life to make the money to come see my show. Why shouldn't I give them two hours too?
People see me, and they see the suit, and they go: "you're not fooling anyone", they know I'm rock and roll through and through. But you know that old thing, live fast, die young? Not my way. Live fast, sure, live too bloody fast sometimes, but die young? Die old. That's the way- not orthodox, I don't live by "the rules" you know.
In terms of television and movies, I've been really interested in seeing the partnership of comedy and beauty and heart. I think they can go together really well and really thoughtfully. But, I'm a total one-hour drama addict. I think when you're a comedian, you tend towards dramas because that's the less stressful thing to watch.
Republicans are just rich, old, white people - that's all they are. You ever see the Republican National Convention? All white people - six black people: paid actors. James Earl Jones in his most difficult, challenging role! Tune in and attempt to watch him look pleased during a George Bush speech. And Clarence Thomas - as himself.
I remember reading in a comedy book very long ago when I first started, a person said there's a difference between a sense of humor and a sense of funny. A sense of humor is knowing what makes you laugh and a sense of funny is knowing what makes other people laugh. The journey of comedy, in a sense, is negotiating those two worlds.
I guarantee you that Leonardo Prince is doing nothing but listening to the 'Tron: Legacy' soundtrack on loop. And he's probably seen 'Tron: Legacy' twice, or three times. And the other two times, he's taken people who he thinks are important to him, and judged by their reaction to see if he should still be friends with them or not.
I'm one of those guys where you know, I'm 23 years into this and I love the road more than ever and rather than whittling down my schedule to just play the major cities, I've actually expanded the amount of places that I go to because I want to see a bunch of stuff. You know, plan it as I can while I'm still young enough to travel.
You want to know what makes me tick, I'll tell you what makes me tick. I was a boy growing up in Brooklyn; I read a two-penny magazine called 'The Hawk's Nest.' Nobody entered that nest that didn't leave a little richer and a little wiser. And that 11-year-old boy said, 'Isn't that a wonderful thing.' And that's all there is to it.
I do find some of the meanest, most exclusionary people are the nerds. And they rebel against other nerds! What are you doing? As much as I love nerds and the nerd movement, the nerd-on-nerd violence is really bad. A lot of times, nerds are the meanest ones online. And also, the trolling can be very extensive because they're smart.
In a crisis, my family puts aside all its petty differences and hatreds... Because a crisis, is a perfect opportunity to create *new* petty differences and hatreds! My dad's from that era when you lived to 50, your heart exploded and that was that. You know when you cook bacon and you pour the grease into the can? My dad's the can!
I love being on stage if I'm not on a set. If I'm at home, I'm usually in my office editing or reconstructing my website or whatever it may be. I just love putting creativity into a performance, so if the right script comes along, and I certainly am reading comedies and dramas now, then I'm ready willing and able to give it a shot.