Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
A new study shows that the child population in San Francisco is dwindling and in fact San Francisco has the smallest share of children of any major city in the United States. That's odd, huh? For some reason couples in San Francisco don't seem to be reproducing as much as couples in other cities. Gee, I wonder what the problem is there? You think it might be something in the Rice-A-Roni?
I can't bear small talk, it's awful. I want to get beyond that thing of discussing how the weather is a bit better today than it was yesterday, and how this is a nice restaurant. I want to get to what are the problems, what's really going on. Are you in love? Are you in a lot of pain? What's really going on in your life? I'm interested in that area, whether it's on stage or in real life.
The thing that struck me is so many people that said, "Hey, I've been watching you since I was 12, and I'm 25 now." It was a weird shift, because you start off fighting for an audience based on doing something so strange that only you find funny, and it's weird when other people find it funny. Those people aren't always ready to laugh yet, and there's a sort of standoffish quality to it.
I want you teabaggers out there to understand one thing: while you idolize the Founding Fathers and dress up like them, and smell like them, I think it's pretty clear that the Founding Fathers would have hated your guts. And what's more, you would've hated them. They were everything you despise. They studied science, read Plato, hung out in Paris and thought the Bible was mostly bulls**t.
But with dogs, we do have "bad dog." Bad dog exists. "Bad dog! Bad dog! Stole a biscuit, bad dog!" The dog is saying, "Who are you to judge me? You human beings who’ve had genocide, war against people of different creeds, colors, religions, and I stole a biscuit?! Is that a crime? People of the world!" "Well, if you put it that way, I think you’ve got a point. Have another biscuit, sorry.
You get pigeonholed by what you sort of look like. And I don't mean this in a self-deprecating way. I'm grateful for any opportunity to act. But I think that if you're not classically attractive or mainstream attractive, especially as you get older, there's only like three jobs that people think you do. Like, "police officer who may be gay." District attorney is a big one. Lawyer. Doctor.
The thing with Catholicism, the same as all religions, is that it teaches what should be, which seems rather incorrect. This is what should be. Now, if you're taught to live up to a what should be that never existed - only an occult superstition, no proof of this should be - then you can sit on a jury and indict easily, you can cast the first stone, you can burn Adolf Eichmann, like that!
I'd like the campaigning to be about all the things they're not going to do. Just tell me what you're not going do! Don't tell me what you're going to do. Just say "I'd really like to do solar energy but I'm not going to be able to. I really want to dig holes everywhere in the country but I really won't be able to do it because people seem to think that maybe my water will be screwed up."
Now with the allocation and the understanding of the lack of understanding, we enter into a new era of science in which we feel nothing more than so much so as to say that those within themselves, comporary or non-comporary, will figuratively figure into the folding of our non-understanding and our partial understanding to the networks of which we all draw our source and conclusions from.
I am aware of the technical distinction between ‘less’ and ‘fewer’, and between ‘uninterested’ and ‘disinterested’ and ‘infer’ and ‘imply’, but none of these are of importance to me. ‘None of these are of importance,’ I wrote there, you’ll notice – the old pedantic me would have insisted on “none of them is of importance”. Well I’m glad to say I’ve outgrown that silly approach to language
When you're a father you censor yourself. You get just as angry with a child but you don't want to say, "What the filth and foul and I'll filth and foul, filth and foul and, yeah, ya filth and foul face, and I'll filth and foul, foul, filth!" You don't want to say that to a child so you censor yourself and you sound like an idiot: "What the... Get your... I'll put a... Get out of my face!"
The comedy gods are smiling on me tonight, because I have been saying, for the longest time, that president Bush must set a timetable for removing his head from his ass...and, by god, today they went in and looked for it... They didn't find it. So now we don't know where it is, but at least for once in my life, I get to see the words "Bush", "operation", and "success" in the same sentence.
There's more attention paid to entertainers than ever and less that they have to say. Not that entertainers were ever a great beacon of knowledge to begin with, but at least when the Beatles were the leaders of the culture, they had a message. It was brief; it wasn't terribly complicated. "Give Peace a Chance." "All You Need is Love." But at least they were trying. At least they had grown.
Hillary Clinton said that her childhood dream was to be an Olympic athlete. But she was not athletic enough. She said she wanted to be an astronaut, but at the time they didn't take women. She said she wanted to go into medicine, but hospitals made her woozy. Should she be telling people this story? I mean she's basically saying she wants to be president because she can't do anything else.
I don't personally feel comfortable performing in a comedy club, mainly because as an audience member, I've never enjoyed that experience. It feels a little bit theme-park-ish to me, in that it's a club whose product is comedy. I find that weird. It's like those specialty chocolate stores, where everything is chocolate. It's too specific. I like going somewhere that specializes in variety.
I used many times to touch my own chest and feel, under its asthmatic quiver, the engine of the heart and lungs and blood and feel amazed at what I sensed was the enormity of the power I possessed. Not magical power, but real power. The power simply to go on, the power to endure, that is power enough, but I felt I had also the power to create, to add, to delight, to amaze and to transform.
I ended up [doing video] meeting Gillian [Grassie] at the same time that we were getting together a book. We ended up working on it, and she recognized that I had a flair for certain things, and we've worked through it together so that the writing could be really good. It was the perfect partnership, just finding my literary voice and figuring out how comedy translates to the written word.
Now, some people do this for shock value. Shock is just another uptown word for surprise. Granted it has a different quality to it, but a joke is about surprising someone. I'm a great believer in context. You can joke about anything. I do like finding out where the line is drawn, deliberately crossing it and bringing some of them with me across the line, and having them be happy that I did.
Sometimes, after I'd gone at the coke like one of those snow plows moving up First Avenue, I'd think my heart was over on the dresser, pounding, and I was watching it. I asked some of the doctors who drifted through the intensive-care unit what kind of effect total cocaine abuse has on the heart and they said things like, "Well, there's not enough valid information...." That kind of answer.
This happened to me last week. We're in the process of remodeling our house; we've been doing it for a while now. And we have the painters in, putting sheets up around the furniture, you know? And we have a piano, just a regular, up against the wall piano. One of the painters said to me, "Is that y'all's piano?" I said, "Nah, that's our coffee table, it just has buckteeth! Here's your Sign!
I use my work as catharsis. That's often the best thing that we can do, is to allow ourselves to rage because it's so rare that we get to. We're told to forgive - I don't want to! I don't want to forgive my abuser! I don't care to and I don't like that assumption that forgiveness makes me a better person. It's not authentic to me, my feelings and what I need. But everyone has their own way.
If your dad is anything like mine, then you have no clue what to buy him for Father's Day. The only Father's Day tradition in my family is the annual conversation he and I have where I say, 'Hey, Dad, what do you want for Father's Day this year?' and he says, 'Nothing.' Then I ask my mom what I should get him and she says, 'He likes sandalwood soap, dangly jewelry and Chanel No. 5 perfume.'
Fame stole my yellow. Yellow is the color you get when you're real and brutally honest. Yellow is with my kids[...]The bundle of bright yellow warming my core, formerly frozen and uninhabitable[...]They got yellow from me, and I felt yellow giving it to them and it was all good[...]So, why am I leaving my show? It took my yellow. I wanted it back. Without it I can't live. The gray kills me.
Marketing is all pervasive. They're getting marketed products they can't afford - can't ever hope to acquire. They believe the only way they're ever going to achieve happiness is the acquisition of these products. Products they can't afford. They see people living that lifestyle, and they have that lifestyle beamed incessantly into their minds through media, which you know I participate in.
Norwich is a fine city. None finer. If there is another city in the United Kingdom with a school of painters named after it, a matchless modern art gallery, a university with a reputation for literary excellence which can boast Booker Prize-winning alumni, one of the grandest Romanesque cathedrals in the world, and an extraordinary new state-of-the-art library then I have yet to hear of it.
When you hear the ex-politician tell you that the reason they created the War on Drugs was to get black people and to get hippies...that to me is just as shitty as saying all Mexicans are murderers and rapists. Or all Muslims. That's what I'm paying attention to. And everybody is hedging their bets when it comes to marijuana. The government is sitting on this lie saying it's a gateway drug.
Don't bring your sand toys to the park. That's another bad move. Because I go to the park, and I'm on the Vicodin and a little weed too - let's face it - and I go in there, and my wife's like, 'Bring the sand toys! Bring the sand toys!' And I know what happens every single time: I become sand toy repo man from the eight little kids that run off in nine different directions with my sand toys.
As a single couple, we are no longer able to hang around with married couples 'cause they cannot be in our presence without getting very annoying. It's always like, 'So, when are you guys getting married? Huh? When are you getting married? When are you guys getting married?!' I dunno, you're married - when are you gonna die? You're already married, death will be next. When are you gonna die?
There's probably some buried conservative inside of me, coming out like a little gremlin in my belly that I've suppressed. This is a sort of character I've done before: He's kind of dumb and he's kind of arrogant, and a little seedy. A little coke-y. He's gotten into the cocaine or he's had too much coffee. It's been pretty fun. Not all the songs are like that but it sort of creeps in there.
You're the hero of your own story. So it's interesting for historical revisionism to happen. I had let go of my own story from my own childhood and whatever anger I had and I began to see it from a very different place. It's really easy to be like "This thing happened to me! Look what they did to me or are doing to me." These are such powerful ideas and it's so easy to hold onto them forever.
Yeah, this country's founding fathers are a bunch of dead rich white men, but they did set things up so you could come and sit at the table, so don't piss in the finger bowls, all right? Thank you. In return for unfettered economic opportunity and no government death squads, try to get along with your new stepmotherland, and don't be resentful if there's a set of house rules already in place.
Climate experts say we should tell villagers in developing countries to reduce the amount of cooking smoke they generate to help fix global warming. You know, it's as if these people don't hate us enough already. I mean, they live in mud huts, they have thatch roofs, their clothes are made of straw. We pull up in a bunch of Humvees and SUVs going, 'Hey, you want to cut the smoke out of here?'
What a great unifier getting scared is. Not in an actual threatening, real-world way, but getting scared from horror movies or haunted houses or ghost stories. You laugh because it's a release. People laugh when they're nervous. I laugh so much at a haunted house. It's out of fear, but it's also a wonderful release. Getting scared like that, you feel good, and you feel exhilarated afterwards.
Behind me, I heard a young woman of 25 say, "If it weren’t for my horse, I wouldn’t have spent that year in college." Now, I'm gonna repeat that, because it bears repeating. "If it weren't for my horse..." as in, giddyup, giddyup, let's go — "I wouldn't have spent that year in college," which is a degree-granting institution. Don't think about that too long, or BLOOD will shoot out your NOSE!
I'm not playing a character. What I'm doing though is taking the worst, most shameful, peculiar, or troubling aspects of my personality. So there are elements of me that are not there. The happy version of me is not really in the show, because there's nothing funny about being happy. So it's more like I'm poaching on the funniest parts of me rather than actually creating some other character.
[Donald] Trump ditched his press pool. That's just stupid and funny. Get over it. You know, [Bill] Clinton ditched his press pool. This is something presidents do sometimes. Don't make everything that Trump does a scandal because what'll happen is you'll diminish the real scandals, you know? You've got to get over the fact that you hate the person and rather focus on what you're trying to do.
It's when I make a joke about Indian people and then a white person comes up to me and says, "That's wrong. You should not talk about Indian people," and the Indian people are over in the audience like, "I thought that joke was hilarious." That is so weird. Then why are you getting mad? You're burning unnecessary calories. You're getting made for the sake of getting mad. I don't understand it.
I say we spend some money, clean up some junkies and make them all go work for the Red Cross. You ever give blood to the Red Cross? Little paper hatted trainee kid, just sticking you full of holes. Golly, jeez, this is way harder than the deep fryer, how does this work? You get an ex-junkie in there, bap-bap, he's gonna find a vein. You're in, you're out, you got sugar cookie and you're happy!
Thanksgiving is a holiday that brought together two different cultures. The pilgrims came here with the best intentions. They decided to flee an oppressive people and move to a new land. Where they thrived. And became an oppressive people. You get certain people on the same continent, there's going to be a problem. Pilgrims and Indians. Protestants, Catholics. My family, anybody else's family.
I think as a performer, it can be really great to stand on stage, especially when you have more time, but I do think about the specific people in the audience, how it's hard for them to get up and go to the bathroom, how they chose not to do other things that night and have turned off their phones and everything. So for that reason, I think it's necessary to mix it up and talk to the audience.
If you're normal, if you're healthy, you look at your children and you see your image, and you want the best for them. And you applaud when they take their first steps. And you are their biggest fan when they first sing in church. And, you know, that's a normal healthy person, father, parent, I believe. Well, multiply that by infinity and that's how God sees you. So I say that's pretty "nice."
My goal, my dream has already come true. Every kid's dream is to become a pro skater, you know? Not only have I become a pro skater, but to me personally, I ride for the best sponsors there are. That's even more than I ever expected... I didn't skate to please everyone else. I started skating because I love to skate. you gotta watch out because there will come a point where you'll forget that.
We're down in Mexico. It's for a bachelor party, so we go into a Mexican strip club... I go back with this woman down a murky hallway, and then without missing a beat - these ladies are all business - she goes, 'Go ahead, take out your dong.' 'I'm not taking out my dong. And by the way, who uses the word dong? If you want to be hip to the lingo, they're not using the word dong up in the States.
Christianity has a built-in defense system: anything that questions a belief, no matter how logical the argument is, is the work of Satan by the very fact that it makes you question a belief. It's a very interesting defense mechanism and the only way to get by it -- and believe me, I was raised Southern Baptist -- is to take massive amounts of mushrooms, sit in a field, and just go, "Show me.".
People do need a social license to go, "Ha ha ha," and have a good time. It's a strange thing. There's a lot of social ritual around comedy and laughter. It's a bonding experience for groups, but nobody can tell you much about how funny somebody is. Sometimes people just need to be in a group and be laughing together, just like they need to be in a group in watching some really terrifying film.
I read something in the paper that really confused me the other day. It said that 80 percent of the people in New York are minorities. Shouldn't you not call them minorities when they get to be 80 percent of the population? That's a very white attitude, don't you think? I mean, you could take a white guy to Africa and he'd be like 'Look at all the minorities around here! I'm the only majority.'
I love tattooed women, maybe because they are uncontrollable, they are themselves to the point of drawing symbols of their power on their skin. Talk about owning your own body, being in your body, claiming yourself. I love it. When the world is in an uproar over whether women should have a choice or not when it comes to their own bodies, being tattooed is one of the most visible choices of all.
What I was trying to say in that bit, without saying it out loud, is that there were things - you're right, everything is very politicized these days, literally down to what kind of coffee you drink - that I used to fight with people about. And by the way, not just people like Republicans and Christians, but liberal friends of mine and very radical left-wing types, and alternative, indie types.
Every time the tour guide told a story, he would build it up to the point where he'd say, "And there was Bloody Joe, and his young ghost son walked into the room." He would build it up, and then it was just "the ghost walked into the room." And he would say, "Let's move on," and that would be it. It's like, wait, what happened to the bloody ghost? That's it? We knew he was making some of it up.
Sometimes I'll be confident and go into a shop and say, "Hello, yeah, all right," and then the next day, if someone looks at me or talks to me, I just don't know what to do. If you're walking down the street with a baseball cap, you might be fine. But if you're in a pub and you see someone look at you, you think the worst thing in the world now is if they come over. It's a really weird feeling.