Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The two things I understand best are stand-up comedy and martial arts. And those things require an ultimate grasp of the truth. You have to be objective about your skills and abilities to compete in both.
Chris Nolan can put Batman in full body armor, have him drive a car that looks likes a tank, and make him political, and everyone says, 'Oh, that's OK.' But try making him Filipino, and everyone gets mad.
The thing that I'm known for - at least, depending on what Subreddit you go to - is being a comedian. And so, even when talking about heavy things, I still want to try to use humor to walk us in the door.
I understand a lot of celebrities lose weight because they have the opportunity to get in shape and become healthier, but when you get so polished, you can't tell the story of a blue-collar family anymore.
Little did I know that earning a living at stand-up is the hardest thing you can do. But once I started doing it, I just loved it, and I realized that I was actually kinda good at it, and then that was it.
I think Jersey stands alone, and because I'm from Jersey, I never make fun of where people are from. I'll make fun of what they look like, but I'll never make fun of where they are from. Jersey is special.
On stage and in person, I think I am nice, thoughtful, and empathetic. But for some reason when I'm online, I become super aggressive and unhinged. I should probably get off of Twitter and see a therapist.
I've got a role in the new Billy Bob Thornton movie that Billy Bob wrote and is going to direct called 'Jayne Mansfield's Car.' I only have four scenes, but I have as much dialogue as anybody in the movie.
A weird sort of awareness set in, like, 'Wow. My standup isn't just separate from everything else I do anymore.' With Twitter and Face book, everything is universal that everything everybody says gets seen.
I think I have enough of a sense to know what works for me and what doesn't, without going into some big thing and analyzing what I do. I'm in a position that allows me to do what I want to do, and I do it.
I believe in love in hindsight, meaning attraction and connection can be remembered as love at first sight. But how could you possibly know at first sight? That's too much pressure to put on a relationship.
So many times I've done a CD, and then the week after I record it, I've got this new tagline that's killer. And it makes the whole bit better. It happens all the time. But that's just the process of comedy.
My wife and I both made a list of 5 people we could sleep with...she read hers out and there were no surprises...1 George Clooney...2 Brad Pitt etc...I thought 'Ive got the better deal here'...1 Your sister
I got a naughty thrill out of listening to music that was that dirty, especially being that young and able to listen to it around my parents. Kids would come over to my house to listen to Too $hort records.
I don't know what people who I've never met think about me. Some have written horrible things, some have written nice things - but I'm proud of the fact I've remained close to everyone I've ever worked with.
In today's world, you would call my father mostly unaccessible. I'm not sure that isn't true of most fathers at that time. He went through the Depression. I don't know what that would have done to my psyche.
One time I happened to use the word 'denigrate' onstage, and it didn't get any reaction. So as I continued my act, the left side of my brain was fast-forwarding to see if I had any other big words coming up.
A weird sort of awareness set in, like, 'Wow. My stand-up isn't just separate from everything else I do anymore.' With Twitter and Face book, everything is universal that everything everybody says gets seen.
For the most part, comedians are pretty friendly with each other. They always say they badmouth each other, but most of the time, they're friends. We're the only ones that can really stand our type of humor.
I always wanted to make strangers and friends and family laugh. I was over ten years younger than my brothers. It was hard to get attention without some kind of gimmick, like athletic stardom or being funny.
Joe Rogan has this podcast where he's talking astrophysics and lean BMI indexes and weird philosophy most of the time and yet, when you see him onstage, you're like, 'Oh, this guy is just a killer comedian.'
Well, 'Problematic' was the opposite of a show that was nostalgic and a light fluffy look at life. We were literally trying to kick a hornets' nest, and I don't know how effectively we did or didn't do that.
We got to go to Lucas Ranch and, at that time, my brother was still living in a condo about a mile from Robin Williams, and so I made all of the other comics jealous because I got to get a ride home with him.
Comedy shows in D.C. are so much fun. I think because of the intense area that is connected to politics that people need, they need their down time. D.C. audiences are almost universally praised by comedians.
I don't go, 'It is now time to change Americans' perception of Muslims. It's going to be a long day.' I think you just try to be unique and try to be yourself, and if something good comes of that, then great.
I want to be so famous that I'm the pop-culture reference that people would make to try and be racist to me. So I'd be walking down the street, and someone would be, like, 'Hey, look at this Kumail Nanjiani.'
I'm not looking for 'outer esteem' anymore, what they call 'other esteem.' I'm looking for self-esteem. And people think that self-esteem is built with accomplishments. And, 'Hey, look what I did in my life.'
The kids didn't call me Amy Schumer; they called me Amy Jewmer. One summer, I'll never forget this, all the kids took turns throwing handfuls of pennies at me. I know, I was like, 'Excuse me - this is awesome!
"Herbal medicine's been around for thousands of years!" Indeed it has, and then we tested it all, and the stuff that worked became 'medicine'. And the rest of it is just a nice bowl of soup and some potpourri.
You know, if you look all my stuff... If you go back to 'Saturday Night Live,' my stuff always has music, even a bunch of my comedy stuff - like in 'Shrek,' the donkey is always singing. Music is always there.
With Don Rickles and me, we're just telling the truth. We're not terrific people, and we're not gonna win the beauty contest. We're just average Joes. We're just being who we are, and I think people like that.
But to do it professionally is a quantum leap difference and my father had to be persuaded by these kind of Ivy League professors that I should go to the Yale Drama School, another one of the stories in there.
I thought they may have presumed too much knowledge of certain things for people who are not comedians. Like Montreal. A comic understands what it is and its importance, but someone else may not know about it.
Whenever I've done jobs, whether it's an acting job or writing job, there's an aspect of it that feels like you help build your piece of it, and then you watch as someone takes it, and they finish building it.
I think the thing about it is when you grow up in Chicago there's such a thing as putting on airs, you know? And you just learn not to put on airs. Don't act like, 'Oh boy, I'm somebody.' They'll slap you down.
I love the Rio Grande Valley. I always say it's home - Texas is home. I've been out in L.A. a little over ten years, and I still get so excited when I go back home. It just feels comfortable; it makes me smile.
As long as the people who kinda wanna go kill other people are going to go kill other people who kinda wanna go kill other people, you're killing all the right people and opening up all the best parking spaces.
My parents passed away when I was a teenager, so I had to learn different survival techniques, I think, in comedy. You know, using comedy as a pressure release, as a release valve in life really kept my sanity.
Faith itself is a horrible mechanism that stunts the growth of ideas. It also stunts the act of questioning, and it does this by pushing the idea that you have to have faith - and that nothing has to be proven.
I'm a slave to the culture, so I see an Audi, a Denali, or an Escalade, my neighbor got the four-door Porsche. I have a really nice truck. But it's a Durango and I like frontin'! I like to ride by and show off.
'Baskets' isn't a CBS show. Nothing against that, but this is an off-kilter show on cable that the channel lets you do interesting things. Look, if it works, it works. And if it doesn't, it's just a miniseries.
I'm not a marijuana user, so I always feel kind of fraudulent. I applaud this, I do recreational drugs, but marijuana's never one of those. People think because I talk about drugs, that I smoke pot. But I don't.
I stopped doing standup because it stopped being fun. And the reason it stopped being fun was it was harder to write - and this was before the Internet - it was harder to write new stuff. It had gotten so crazy.
The things that make me laugh are considered smart or whatever, I guess. But stuff that's self-consciously intelligent or self-consciously hip or cool, that doesn't do it for me either. You just try to be funny.
I really never thought people would think that I was funny, I thought (my friends) thought I was funny because I was their friend, but other people would just think I was an asshole. I was at least partly right.
When you start doing television, you want a transcript of what you're going to say, and every time I've had to do that, I've looked at it and gone, "That's just not funny." It only comes alive when you speak it.
Coming up with your own opinion is hard. When I go to see a movie I don't really know if I enjoyed it, so I ask my wife and listen to people talking on the way out. If they all say it was magnificent I'll agree!
I was a sign language interpreter from when I was 17, but I don't do that anymore. Both of my parents were deaf. I grew up in a deaf household. I don't do any jokes about it really, but yeah that was my day job.
I think, with any topical show, it's very easy to find yourself caught up in the news cycle, and working at 'The Daily Show,' I definitely found myself in that, where we would be talking about the last 24 hours.
I'll defend child pornography, how about that? What's wrong with seeing some child pornography? What if you watch child pornography because you find it hilarious? Then should it not a protected freedom of speech?