Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I don't like being in the UK for every other reason aside from the show. It's aesthetically uncomfortable to me on almost every level for reasons that might sound petty but I can't get past. The audiences are far more challenging and while I wouldn't say I prefer it, I certainly need it to ward off my inherent laziness.
It's very tempting when you really want to be with someone to settle for much, much less - even a vague pathetic facsimile of less - than you would have ever imagined. Remember always what you set out to get, and please don't settle for less. These guys exist because there are a lot of women out there who allow them to.
The quicker we all realize that we've been taught how to live life by people that were operating on the momentum of an ignorant past the quicker we can move to a global ethic of community that doesn't value invented borders or the monopolization of natural resources, but rather the goal of a happier more loving humanity.
The biggest piece of advice that I give young comedians is: If it's your goal to get where I'm at, go do something else. Because you'll never get here. Never. The odds are so bad. Because not only do you have to be a really, really strong comedian but you also have to be lucky. And most people don't get that combination.
I think if you come out to California trying to be an actor, it's pretty hard. There's desperation. A lot of people are desperate, and a lot of people are clueless, including me. It's hard to try to figure it out. I've never told you, but I have head shots that if you saw them... they're so terrible! It's so embarrassing.
I enjoy 'Life Aquatic.' I think that one, from a visual standpoint, is just such a fun, visual movie to look at, whether it's the shots of the ship cut down the middle, that set where you can see everyone in each of their rooms doing whatever and moving about - something like that, I could watch that on a loop for an hour.
What comedy does, for the most part, is it voices something so simplistically that people will agree with us, and then once you agree with something, you go, 'That's what I think.' So what you're trying to do is try to voice arguments that people get on a side with. So they can use that, maybe at a dinner party, themselves.
The number one reason why marijuana is illegal is because the Pharma Cartel does not want you to grow your own medicine. The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper. The first car ever made ran on hemp oil. Hemp seeds are also the healthiest food on the planet with the highest protein content out of any plant.
People are roasting each other at parties, at work events, around the fire. It's so fun. People are busting each other's chops, and it's a sign of affection, truly. It's a true test of love and friendship: can you make a man laugh at himself? So what makes a good burn? Go after targets you love and respect. And hit 'em hard.
Martin Noakes is a British conspiracy theorist who also happens to be maybe the best songwriter in the world, in my opinion. His songs are beautiful. They're crazy. That 9/11 song... no song has ever gotten into my head more. And it's inappropriate. You can't just like walk around singing about "jet fuel doesn't melt steel."
I keep getting asked out by really young, good looking boys and really ugly lesbians. So, even if I wanted to jump onto the tuna boat, I wouldn't because I'm not getting high-class babes that I should get at this level of my career. And I always know the ugly ones are serious and that the good-looking ones are goofing on me.
Part of growing up is learning your strengths and weaknesses. What better way to figure out that hand-eye coordination ain't your thing than by getting drilled in the mouth by a red, rubber ball? You only gotta get beaned in the face so many times before you figure out, 'I better hit the books because this is not working out.
Have you noticed that the meanest, shrillest, least compassionate and most heartless people who are well off and have all the medical coverage they'll ever need are seemingly sickened beyond cure by the notion that someone who literally cannot afford health care is somehow beneath contempt and must be vilified and humiliated?
I remember seeing a movie with Jose Ferrer and Rosemary Clooney where they were husband and wife, and they got in bed, and he had on polka-dot pajamas and she had on striped pajamas, and when they got up the next morning he had on the striped pajamas and she had the polka dot pajamas, and that was considered racy at that time!
You know, sometimes I worry, you know, is comedy and my type of comedy going to get stale? Is it going to be so offensive that it becomes uninteresting or so niche that I don't have an audience anymore? But it keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger, where roasting now is a movement. These roasts are on in India, in Mexico.
In Boston where community policing is so important, they don't necessarily have to like each other, but they know each other. The cops in Boston make it their business to get out of their vehicles, to engage the public, to walk around the neighborhoods. They live in the community that they police. And I think these things help.
I know for myself, every now and again on HBO, they'll show some of the young comedian specials from the '80s and early '90s, and it's just fascinating to watch those comedians - some of whom are people that are world-famous, like Chris Rock or Judd Apatow - to see the jokes that people had, but also, the way everything looked.
I'm looking for laughs, you know? If it take me to flip over a table, if I have to go physical comedy, I will do it. But whatever the joke needs at that particular time, is where I'm dedicated to. I'm not into beating somebody down and beating myself up. I don't do insults and things like that. I don't do it - I'm a storyteller.
I drink every night. But I don't hang out and party. Not that I'm selling out Madison Square Garden, but in the old days after a show you could hang out with a few people. But now you're hanging around with 20 people, all of whom don't know each other, and they're all, "Leave my outgoing greeting on my voice mail, man, come on!"
People always try to palm me weed when I'm always talking about how I don't smoke weed. But they always try to ... and when they stop offering me weed, then I'm going to feel kind of out of touch, like: "What did I do wrong that you won't offer me drugs that I don't do?" Because I'll trade those drugs out for drugs that I do do.
I always do that at the end of shows, like a Q&A session. First of all it lets people know that this isn't some preprogrammed, press-play show where I have to say the exact same words in the exact same order. That's part of the thing with live comedy is that people like the fun aspect of it and I enjoy the taking questions part.
Deciding to get back together with someone is a complicated and difficult decision. Just remember that the person you are getting back together with is the same person who, not long before, looked you in your beautiful face, took full stock of you and all your qualities, and told you that he was no longer in need of your company.
I don't know if you know you're funny, but you enjoy being funny. I know I'm funny because people tell me I am, but when I watch myself, it doesn't make me laugh. Does that make sense? Because I know the jokes, and to me, I feel like I'm pulling the wool over people's eyes. And there are probably people who do not enjoy what I do.
I have 236 movies on my queue and I feel like I should always be watching movies. Like if I wake up in the middle of the night and don't fall directly back to sleep, I'm like, 'I've been up for an hour and a half I could have watched 'Toy Story 3' by now.' In this economy it is a sin not to be watching movies when you have Netflix.
All illegal narcotics are medicinal. Boredom is a disease worse than cancer. Drugs cure it, with little or no side effects if used as directed. Life's temporary for a reason, it gets boring after awhile. You should be inventing new drugs is what you should be doing! Newer, crazier drugs... and more holes, that's what you ladies need!
So in that way, fame has become a weirder thing to go after, but the thing about me is I've never been after fame. That sounds cliché, but it's true. I think fame sounds uncomfortable to me, but being able to like write this book and make my living doing very exciting, creative stuff sounds really amazing. It has been really amazing.
I only like the live audience. I don't even like to do standup where it's being filmed. Because it affects the way the audience responds to what you say, because it makes them uncomfortable. You have to perform in a light room, and I prefer a dark room. But I love to perform, and I don't really see myself doing any television at all.
That's my idol, Elvis Presley. If you went to my house, you'd see pictures all over of Elvis. He's just the greatest entertainer that ever lived. And I think it's because he had such presence. When Elvis walked into a room, Elvis Presley was in the f***ing room. I don't give a f*** who was in the room with him, Bogart, Marilyn Monroe.
Most authors writing books like 'He's Just Not That Into You' dream of doing what I was being asked to do. I didn't like it. I'm good at giving advice, but doing it on TV and radio felt wrong, and when people resisted my point of view, I was like, 'Why am I doing this? This was not the plan.' So I stopped. It didn't make me feel good.
I have watched every episode of 'RuPaul's Drag Race'... I know a bizarre amount of drag queens now. And it's weird because one of the guys that drives my tour bus in America drove the drag queen show before me, and I used to just sit there and hear all the stories so I could go tell my girlfriend because I knew what a big fan she was.
What you have to remember, when you get to the level of seeing 10,000 people a night, is that they've all paid to have a performance. I need to make sure that they get their money's worth. I don't want to be going on stage and saying, "I'm just going to try some stuff and if it doesn't work, it doesn't matter," because it does matter.
I had this very strict rule when I began auditioning that I wasn't gonna do a thicker accent, because it was like, 'I can't tell if it's supposed to be funny because he talks funny.' And now I feel like there are certain characters that I could play that could involve doing a thicker accent, as long as it's specific to that character.
If I didn't have a gig, I used to ring up all the comedy clubs across the country and go, 'If anyone drops out, I can be there.' Normally, someone would ring you up the day of. It's just perseverance, being scrappy, being a hustler. The first few years, a lot of it was under-the-table work, so that was good. I think I can say that now.
You are one miniscule piece of a never-ending cycle. In fact, you're not even a piece. You're just a holder for billions and billions of other pieces. Whether that's organic components, living organisms inside your body, bacteria or whatever it is, you're just part of the soup of the universe, so just try to enjoy what's good about it.
We're constantly re-evaluating the potential for life. We're finding it where we didn't think it could exist, such as volcanic vents and other extreme conditions like under arctic ice. We're finding life in these incredibly harsh and dynamic conditions, so we're having to re-evaluate our own ideas of what's possible on this planet alone.
A comic, all they have to do is, if you do something funny in a comedy club and you put it up on you tube, it might get a million hits! All it needs to do is resonate with one person who sends it to their friends, who sends it to other people, and before you know it, it has spread virally and BOOM! All of a sudden that person has a name.
But I'm getting to a point where I'm trying to stop reading reviews about myself, only because it's a no-win situation. If they say something nice, you get a little ego pump. But people on the Internet are straight-up cruel, and I'm becoming increasingly uncomfortable reading the ridiculous cruelties that people spit out on the Internet.
The girls that I grew up with, and my friends and I, we just never had interests in common. I loved comedy. I loved Saturday Night Live, Gilda Radner, Lucille Ball, and Goldie Hawn movies. I just wanted to laugh. I liked women in comedy, and I liked male comics as I got a little older. My interests just never matched up with other girls'.
As a longtime practitioner of yoga and a person who's been involved in physical fitness my whole life, I can tell you, yoga helps you achieve altered states of consciousness. It is not just stretching. The only way you can say that it's stretching is if you haven't done it, or that you haven't done it rigorously for a long period of time.
There's a quote I love, the full version is a bastardisation of quotes from William Hutchison Murray and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, but it's about the importance of starting things - not completing or succeeding - but beginning. It ends: "Anything you dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic and power in it. Begin it now!".
You're sort of programmed a certain way because of your environment. That's all you know. But we don't have that anymore because of the internet. Because of the internet we're all communicating with each other all across the board, so you're getting information from people all around the world, hitting a much more diverse slice of culture.
If you're a musician, you create what you love and hope other people love it as well. Amongst musicians, the starting point is what they love, and then they bring people to them. As a comedian, you have to say something that people relate to, or nobody laughs. As an actor, you have to perform the character in the way that people relate to.
I love playing. In lots of ways, I think having been able to carry on playing purely out of love rather than having to do it for a living means I still love the drums. It helps that, if I don't want to play, I don't really have to! I'm not the best drummer in the world, but it's something I love and enjoy, and that sounds like a good trade.
I recommend to you, in my last, an innocent piece of art: that of flattering people behind their backs, in presence of those who, to make their own court, much more than for your sake, will not fail to repeat, and even amplify, the praise to the party concerned. This is of all flattery the most pleasing, and consequently the most effectual.
I wouldn't mind gigging around the same era as Jesus, after he gives his speech about the meek and how blessed they are and all that type of bullshit, going up there and doing a flat 20 [minutes]. I reckon I'd have better stagecraft and presence than Jesus. Yea, I'm a better stand-up comedian than Jesus, so I reckon I could go on after him.
There's so many shows, whether it's 'Last Week Tonight' or 'The Daily Show' or 'Full Frontal' or 'Late Night With Seth Meyers,' that are really doing great stuff talking about what's going on in the world and what's going on with the president, and those stories that everyone winds up talking about, whether on social media or in their jobs.
Theres this little box that African-American actors have to work in, in the first place, and I was able to rise above that box. I could have done a bunch of movies where I stayed as the Axel Foley or Reggie Hammond persona. But I didnt want to be doing the same thing all the time. Every now and then, you crash and burn, but thats part of it.
When I was 23, I didn't have much of an interest in politics. All of my interests were in partying and meeting girls and doing stand-up. That's all I cared about. Now, when you have a kid and stuff, you start watching the news and say, 'They shouldn't take money away from this education department.' You start having much more exact opinions.
I think comedy because of the Internet it has a bigger audience, a bigger fan base. It has fans that understand comedy more than any generation before because there is more guys like you, more guys like me, more guys like Louie CK who talks about it a lot. When you get a chance to see perspective that I don't think you ever got to see before.
For me, in trying to talk about something like policing, it's such a huge issue, and it's an issue that's very local and very personalized to communities, to cities, to legislators, and so, in that way, I think as we started looking into talking about policing, the thing that you realize is that you can't paint everything with the same brush.