Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I know what is funny coming out of my mouth and what is not funny coming out of my mouth. You have to figure out, What is the joke that I can do that nobody else can do?
I definitely want to write some fiction, for sure. I already have half of the next book. I already have it all mapped out. I'm ready. I'm ready to bring it to the world.
What I'm trying to do is be righteous. And when I say “righteous,” I don't mean God. You know? God- Righteous. I mean just when I wake up, I know I was honest to myself.
When we simply write a place off as, like, 'Well, it's just Trump country,' for the people who are there, we do them a disservice on some level. It's their country, too.
I'm terrible about people wanting to take pictures with me. I'm a giant baby about it. They treat you like a cartoon. There's nothing you can do except make light of it.
I was not influenced by Jack Benny, and people have remarked on my timing and Jack's timing, but I don't think you can teach timing. It's something you hear in your head.
The only thing I have never done is a Broadway play. I'm not sure I have the discipline necessary to do a Broadway play. I know it holds a fascination for certain actors.
Seventy-two virgins - does that make sense to anyone? And it's an ancient religion, maybe it was misinterpreted? Maybe it's not 72 virgins, maybe it's a 7-foot-2 Persian.
I feel like, at times, I've been seen as the dirty stepchild of Australian comedy. I think there's a few people out there that are pissed off that I made it big overseas.
Not all comedy clubs or situations are ideal, especially when you're first coming up and I think that's good for you. Eventually you get to express your real personality.
Most of my bits are long stream-of-consciousness- type things, and when I'm doing them onstage, other places to take the theme or idea will hit me, and I just go with it.
The plan was always to come to America, because Pakistan's a scary place. They don't have religious freedom. It's very poor, and there's a lot of violence and corruption.
I was trying to do one-liners and it took me years to realise I just had to be myself. My fear was if I was myself and no one found it funny, I'd have nowhere left to go.
It's this patronizing thing that people have about if you're against the war everyone's lumped together. You know, the soldiers are not scholars, they're not war experts.
I'm a comedian, and I like to work on my live show, and if I'm doing television, I don't have time to work on my live show, and I can become a lame comic, and that sucks.
I've asked these guys in rock bands with all the 18-wheelers driving to the venue how they make money. I just don't understand it. But I don't understand a lot of things.
I want to speak directly to the audience, to say, 'I'm like you - I'm frustrated, I'm not an expert, I don't have a manual on parenting, I make mistakes, I'm selfish too.'
Mutations are exciting. They try to fix 'em when they come out. Did you see the two-headed baby they killed last month when they tried to cut it apart? That was hilarious!
I have tried reading the Bible but that's a tough read there. I watch a lot of religious documentaries. I have a keen interest in religion for someone who's not religious.
'SNL' came out in the '70s. It's a different zeitgeist. It's hard to re-create it, just as it would be hard to do a black-and-white noir film now. The culture's different.
It's this patronizing thing that people have about if you're against the war, everyone's lumped together. You know, the soldiers are not scholars; they're not war experts.
I can act. I've been acting for a long time, but like anything else, don't nobody owe you nothing. You've go to pay your dues. You go from A to Z; you don't go from M to Z.
The economy in Ireland has been rampaging ahead for the last 15 years. Barring an international, political or natural catastrophe, things can only get better for the Irish.
People love to see public figures get taken down a notch, and by the same token, everyone loves to be the center of attention, even when there's a target on their forehead.
Stand-up is just me trying to be as funny as possible in the most concentrated hour with me standing on stage with no storyline, no plot line, and no character development.
Having your own show, where you're not in trouble all the time, because you're kind of the boss, is a wonderful experience. If I made mistakes everyone was very nice to me.
If DreamWorks and Disney need that name to sell the cartoon and get people in the seats, that's what they need. It's not fair, but there's plenty of other work for us to do.
If you interact with anyone, ultimately, all people are the same. However they're dressed, when you're in the house with a person, they're going to be a regular human being.
Some venues are better run than others. Sometimes it's just maddening to deal with full dinners being served in front of your face. You can have a good or bad show anywhere.
What's sad is that we can have a reality-television performer for president without incorporating the other aspects of reality television - like voting and voter engagement.
When I was in college, I walked by the journalism school every day on my way to my own classes, and that's the closest I've come to having any sort of journalism background.
I don't try to be feminist. I just am. It's innately inside me. I have no interest in trying to be the perfect feminist, but I do believe feminists are in good hands with me.
I'm an entertainer and I really enjoy entertaining. I think if you're going to really be what you say you are, you have to really live it, work it, practice it, and think it.
I think I identify more with the smart guy, but most people might take umbrage at that. I like to think of myself as a real thinker, but I suppose people might beg to differ.
So, I'm 34. I'm kind of becoming an adult - kind of, I guess. But I know that I am because, the other day, I said to somebody, 'Dude, dude, don't - those are the good plates.
There are no subtleties in a war zone. I think that's why comedy does so well there. It goes right for the gut. So those punch lines start penetrating the bullet-proof vests.
Every comedian is just doing the comedy they find funny. This is me and it's not clean in any way. I could get a lot more work on TV playing clean but it's never interesting.
I don't think interviewing people is any different than normal communication. The only thing is that it has these boundaries set upon it as to what the conversation is about.
I was in Starbucks and the person in front of me said: 'Can I have a tall, skinny, black Americano please?' I said: 'Are you ordering coffee or voting in the U.S. elections?'
I was talking to a guy who was holding his 18-month-old daughter with the only limb he had left, and he had a smile on his face. I thought, 'I'm not even a 10th of this man.'
I just say what I think is the funniest thing I could say. I'm not trying to make headlines. I'm just trying to say the stuff that I think is funny and will make people laugh.
One of the great things about Houston is that they police themselves. It's the way Boston was in the '80s. No hacks or thieves are tolerated in the community, and that's HUGE.
I had a great time on News Radio, I got to make tons of money in relative obscurity and learn a lot about the TV biz and work on my standup act constantly. It was a dream gig.
Populate your life with people different from you. Once you leave school, you get to choose the kinds of people you're going to be around rather than forced to be around them.
I loved the Oscars, and I had V.H.S. tapes for the Oscars, and I used to watch them over and over. There was probably one year where I watched it, like, 20 times or something.
I have a work-out regime; I am not a maniac. It sounds cliche, but stand-up comedy, doing a one-man show, helps keep me young, and yes, it is exhausting, but I don't collapse.
When I worked on 'The Daily Show,' we had some puppets made of myself, John Oliver, and Jon Stewart. When I left the show, I stole the puppet. I took what was rightfully mine.
I've done some things I'm embarrassed about, and I like to tell people about them so that maybe they feel less embarrassed or alone when they do something they're unsure about.
You know, making a movie is a collaborative effort and sometimes all the ingredients don't work out. I know that every now and again I am going to make a movie that won't work.
I was always funny, but I wasn't a great musician, and I wanted to be a musician way more than I wanted to be a comic. I just didn't think comedians were cool when I was a kid.