Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The reason I wrote 'Hit List' is the 50 mysterious deaths of witnesses to the JFK assassination. We're talking about CIA agents, FBI agents, reporters, people who had foreknowledge, or people who spoke too much afterward.
I know now for a fact that improv can't hold a candle to doing standup. It's not the same buzz, it just isn't. It feels infantile to me at times. When you see guys who do it really well, great. But improv needs a rewrite.
When I first started doing these roasts in the mid '90s, they were a lost art, like jousting or calligraphy. But I feel like roasts help tame the room and let off steam... It's like it's all being handled by professionals.
Before doing stand-up, I thought acting was easy - it's not easy. It's a hard life. It's easy in its own way, you just stand there and talk. But there is a difference between people who can do it well and people who can't.
I probably get a bit more backlash in Australia than I do in America, to be honest. I was never invited to the Melbourne Comedy Festival because I was too gross, things like that. Which never happened in any other country.
What people like are things to laugh at. Funny shows. It's all in the execution, the writing and the characters, not the setting. And the writing and the execution and the characters are GREAT on (Everybody Loves Raymond).
I knew the full 'Judy Garland Carnegie Hall' double album set at age 2. And then my mother wondered why I was gay. I was like, 'Are you nuts? You would make me get on the table to sing Judy Garland songs and you're upset?'
I've got a little baby, I made him...He doesn't speak, he's 2...He's a slow learner, he's only got 2 words...car and map...I'm slightly worried he's trying to escape. If his next word is passport we are in serious trouble!
I'm a former skydiver, I jumped out of all kinds of things including a hot air balloon. Ironically, once I started skydiving, I felt nervous not having my rig on in case the plane went down because I wasn't used to landing.
I believe that everyone should be treated as an individual. Women should be treated equally in the right to vote, sure. But if Im paying to see a comedy, then I just want to see whos funniest, with everyone treated equally.
There's always been a lot of negative stuff written about me. That's why I don't pay any attention to the critics. They've never liked anything I've done. What do critics know? It's the way the audience reacts that matters.
I don't want people to leave the show being upset. So if I am trying to do a new joke, and sometimes I will talk about things like gun control or hostile massacre and I notice people being upset I will change the direction.
I'd love to be in action movies. I've been trying to convince people. I don't think it's anything physical holding me back. I think it's a general vibe thing that's holding me back. I don't project action confidence, maybe.
Even going on stage is a service because it brings people up from thinking about their lost job or their lost spouse or something like that, so that even helps people when I'm doing comedy; it's all done to make them laugh.
In my Comedy Club sets, I just work on what is fresh and try to build that show as long as I can. I don't like to do burnt material on stage. Even though my crowd loves to hear me do old stuff, I don't like to do old stuff.
Every impression that I do is just a terrible variation on an awful Bill Cosby impression. You're doing an Australian accent, but it's just Australian Bill Cosby; or that's just British Bill Cosby; that's Pirate Bill Cosby.
A good joke provides tension, and then, release of that tension. You build the tension by saying things that are controversial. The release is the laugh. The bigger the surprise or insight in your joke, the bigger the laugh.
I don't write my standup on paper or anything; but I just organically do it on stage, have an idea, chat it up a little bit. I'm keeping notes. I'm trying to keep up with this world and try to bring out a special every year.
Because of the Internet, you're sort of forced to deal with people from very different backgrounds and beliefs. It's a great challenge of our time, and depending on when you ask me, I feel optimistic or pessimistic about it.
The case is I talk for a living, so I should be able to say anything I want to say regardless of how you feel. What we're starting to deal with now is your opinion matters, but to be quite honest, your opinion means nothing.
When I was a kid, mostly I played in a ditch that didn't have much water in it. It was for drainage purposes. There was not a lot trouble to get into in that ditch. It was ditch activities like catching crawdads and minnows.
I have Glocks, .45s, Berettas, Remingtons. I like the marksmanship and the discipline that it takes to be a gun owner. I like the machinery. Being able to take it out and clean it is even more fascinating than having the gun.
Every time you see a black romance it's over-the-top. There always has to be extreme hostility between the sexes. He has to cheat. She has to show him how independently strong she is, not just as a woman but as a black woman.
My family didn't have money, and I think it made me fearless. I'm willing to try everything and not be afraid because what's the worst that can be happen? It might not work out, but I can't be worse off than when I was a kid.
I believe that everyone should be treated as an individual. Women should be treated equally in the right to vote, sure. But if I'm paying to see a comedy, then I just want to see who's funniest, with everyone treated equally.
There's nothing wrong with sending a quick note if you're busy or just want to flirt, but it's hard to have any real interaction over text. In the buffet of communication, text messaging should be a side dish, not the entree.
Feeling in love (or lust) and fear feel a lot alike. They both give you that anxious butterfly feeling in your stomach, a sense of excitement, and a general unease physically and mentally. It's easy to confuse love with fear.
Gilbert Gottfried is famously cheap. I'm impressed you're here Gilbert. You gotta buy new clothes and take a week off work just to do this. But you showed up. You tightened your belt and you came. You're like David Carradine.
'Four Weddings and a Funeral' is one of my favorite movies, and I laugh all the time, and I cry during the one funeral. But I'll say that 'Monsters, Inc.' is a movie that really gets me super-emotional. Especially the ending.
Every time you see a black romance, it's over-the-top. There always has to be extreme hostility between the sexes. He has to cheat. She has to show him how independently strong she is, not just as a woman but as a black woman.
With the advent of cell phones, especially with the very small microphone that attach to the cell phone itself, it's getting harder and harder I find, to differentiate between schizophrenics and people talking on a cell phone.
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. That's if I'm in the mood - sometimes I get superbummed.
I think the biggest challenge I have faced is that I have struggled most of my life with often crippling depression which has sometimes if not keeping me off stage kept me from writing regularly and with any kind of confidence.
When you're reading, you're laughing and not quite noticing what's happening. One second you're still kind of chuckling, and then all of sudden you're in the third act of the book and in this very dark and claustrophobic place.
People don't understand that that's really what it is. They're looking for a magic phone number or something. And to a certain extent, I understand that, because comedy is treated so much as a stepping stone by a lot of people.
Life is like a movie, if you've sat through more than half of it and it’s sucked every second so far, it probably isn't going to get great right at the end and make it all worthwhile. None should blame you for walking out early.
It was rough being dark. I got heat from my own people more than anyone else. I remember going to my mom and saying, 'Why am I so black?' And she said, 'Because I'm black. You just gotta always work harder than the average bear.'
I was born October 5, 1957, on the South Side of Chicago, in the Woodlawn area, a neighborhood that hasn't changed much in forty-five years. Our house was on 66th and Blackstone, but the city tore it down when the rats took over.
You have to have that emotional investment in the jokes that you're saying otherwise they actually don't work. You can say exactly the same thing, but if you don't believe it's funny at the time that you're saying it, it won't be.
You just don't see Muslims being matter-of-fact Muslim. They're always defined by their Muslim-ness. We're either terrorists, or we're fighting terrorists. I remember seeing 'True Lies' and going, 'Why are we always the bad guys?'
For me, the enemy is procrastination, and losing attention, you know? It's not the writing that's difficult, it's sitting down to write - if that makes any sense. I feel I can write pretty well, and I can write pretty effectively.
I will say that, I, being a Jew, experience unease before I go onstage; and after I go onstage, and in general. But luckily the forty-five minutes to an hour that I'm onstage I usually forget everything else and I just press play.
It's interesting to go places and see that, at the end of the day, people just want to feel safe, and what that looks like to them varies... but that was encouraging to see that there is more common ground than perhaps I realized.
Very neat for a boy; always cleaned up his mess, no matter where he got it on me. He's Hispanic, so he's like, 'Now who's the wetback?' I'm like, 'Hey, still you. Get back in the kitchen, those dishes aren't going to do themselves.
You don't see me in Los Angeles a lot. I go back home. Because I can't play the game. I can't - my tolerance - I know I'm getting old; I'll be 50 this year. And you know how I know I'm getting old? 'Cause my tolerance level is low.
Humanity is a crazy contradiction. I accept us for who we are. We're not that great. Every time we take a step forward we go back to the same primitive behavior. We're meant to be this way. It's not our fault, it's just who we are.
Men need to be with women otherwise I don't think they really know how to behave. They'll just stare at me and it's awkward, so I scramble around in my mind to say the rudest things I can think of just to get something out of them.
The way my brain processes information is quite odd. I mean, I have Attention Deficit Disorder and another learning disability I can't even spell. I don't even have a high school diploma. I'm smart, but you can't prove it on paper.
When I hit my 20s, I struggled to make it. I got married at 19, and my daughter, Je'Niece, was born a year later. I worked blue collar jobs during the day and comedy clubs at night, and I was earning about $25 a year doing stand-up.
I want people to say at the end of my day, you know, like I used to say about Sidney Poitier and James Cagney and Joan Crawford and Red Skelton and those guys and Bill Cosby. They did quality and substance. You always remember them.