Quotes about life and comedy

• Comedy is not pretty.
• I am a wild and crazy guy!
• Be so good they can’t ignore you.
• It’s pain that changes our lives.
• Be so good they can’t ignore you.
• So, I can hurt now, or hurt later.
• No art comes from the conscious mind.
• Nothing I do is done by popular demand.
• There are few takers for the quiet heart.
• Love is a promise delivered already broken.
• Comedy may be big business but it isn’t pretty.
• Always make room for the unexpected in yourself.
• Relationships end, but they don’t end your life.
• A joke that works is complete knowledge in a nanosecond.
• Thankfully, persistence is a great substitute for talent.
• You can’t really conduct your life by one or two phrases.
• When you’re reaching for a star, there’s a long way to fall.
• Writing is extremely personal, and that’s the joy of it for me.
• It was essential that I never show doubt about what I was doing.
• If I screw up raising my kids, nothing I achieve will matter much.
• I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a byproduct.
• Introductions are hard to come by when your natural state is shyness
• I’ve heard lots of people lie to themselves but they never fool anyone.
• You want to be a bit compulsive in your art or craft or whatever you do.
• The conscious mind is the editor, and the subconscious mind is the writer.
• Chaos in the midst of chaos isn’t funny, but chaos in the midst of order is.
• What is comedy? Comedy is the art of making people laugh without making them puke.
• With comedy, you have no place to go but more comedy, so you’re never off the hook.
• The presence of excessive wealth puts an unnatural spin on the appreciation of art.
• The banjo is truly an American instrument, and it captures something about our past.
• Lots of women are getting involved. They’re not satisfied just being passengers anymore.
• Comedy makes you humble. Because there are so many opportunities to miss, and strike out.
• Comedy is a distortion of what is happening, and there will always be something happening.
• I have found that– just as in real life–imagination sometimes has to stand in for experience.
• She tried to get even with him through psychological warfare but couldn’t, because he didn’t care.
• My problem is that I don’t get the same exhiliration from success as I get depression from failure.
• If you feel tired midway through, give Neil Patrick Harris a Red Bull and throw some sheet music at him.
• I really enjoy finding the right word, creating a good, flowing sentence. I enjoy the rhythm of the words.
• There’s no better way to learn something than to learn it in front of an audience. Your terror drives you.
• I was very vulnerable to criticism for many years. I could read a bad review and remember it my whole life.
• I believe entertainment can aspire to be art, and can become art, but if you set out to make art you’re an idiot.
• Romance takes place when you first fall in love. It stirs all emotions and you can manipulate and be manipulated.
• I was always very shy but as I get older I think, What am I being shy for? You just grow weary of your own hang-ups.
• I was not naturally talented. I didn’t sing, dance or act, though working around that minor detail made me inventive.
• College totally changed my life. It changed what I believe and what I think about everything. I majored in philosophy.
• I just believe that the interesting time in a career is pre-success, what shaped things, how did you get to this point.
• You cannot make your opportunities concur with the opportunities of people whose incomes are ten times greater than yours.
• Awards mean nothing to comedians. What matters is the audience, how you’re doing – artistically, for the most part – at that moment.
• I’m always looking for something to engage my imagination and take me on a little mental voyage. I just want a new topic in my life.
• To me, torture would be, “I can’t think what to write in the next sentence. I’m stuck.” Torture would be if you didn’t have the next idea.
• You know when you’re telling these little stories? Here’s a good idea: have a point. It makes it so much more interesting for the listener!
• I don’t really manage my time. I really just wait until I’m inspired to do something. And when I’m inspired to do something, it just happens.
• Acting is collaborative because you are working with another actor, and it’s almost like a two-man juggling team. You have to really be in sync.
• Whether I’m involved in creating something or not, it’s a personal issue of do I respect it. But you can only know that five or ten years later.
• The course was more plodding than heroic: I did not strive valiantly against doubters but took incremental steps studded with a few intuitive leaps.
• You can’t make something beautiful by trying to make something beautiful. Something becomes beautiful in the process of trying to be something else.
• You have to get comfortable [with your work], you really have to know what you’re doing, and it has to be almost boring to you to be able to do it well.
• It’s funny that some ideas start with a little “What if?” and then suddenly you’re spending a million dollars to shoot the scene and hoping that it works.
• Relationships end, but they don’t end your life. But people do often spending more time finding out about failed relationships than finding successful ones.
• Always do business as if the person you’re doing business with is trying to screw you, because he probably is. And if he’s not, you can be pleasantly surprised.
• You know, there’s a moment when you’re famous when it’s unbearable to go out because you’re too famous. And then there’s a moment when you’re famous just right.
• …it is not the big events that hurt the most but rather the smallest questionable shift in tone at the end of a spoken word that can plow most deeply into the heart.
• It [live performance] is just very difficult. Doing an hour, hour and a half of live standup is an endurance test. You almost have to do it every day to stay up on it.
• What means the most to me changes through the years. There was a time when movies meant the most. But when I’m concentrating on a project, that’s what means the most to me.
• Writing is something I took up rather than anything I had an inclination toward. I like acting -delivering someone else’s message – but writing is more of an accomplishment.
• I don’t think comic timing is the same as music timing, but I definitely find that I’ve learned from just writing in general that songs can be narrative without having a story.
• I cringe at backstory. Because it never quite explains or gets into some psychological thing that is never quite right and never quite the truth and who knows why someone is someway.
• If you’re studying Geology, which is all facts, as soon as you get out of school you forget it all, but Philosophy you remember just enough to screw you up for the rest of your life.
• The real joy is in constructing a sentence. But I see myself as an actor first because writing is what you do when you are ready and acting is what you do when someone else is ready.
• Reviews for someone like me come in three packages. One is justifiable praise, the second is justifiable criticism, and the third is, “This is only published because he’s a celebrity.”
• Home to me is when someone comes up to me and says, “Can I get a selfie?” No. It’s where your wife and your family are. It’s the emotional place where you feel like you’re not away from it.
• I’m enamored with the art world. Anytime you look at anything that’s considered artistic, there’s a commercial world around it: the ballet, opera, any kind of music. It can’t exist without it.
• Acting keeps me alert to people, and life. I don’t know, there’s something about going to work early in the morning, and having to stay alert and concentrated. Maybe that keeps your mind alive.
• I try not to think about legacy because it is all folly. If you study history, even recent history, you’ll find many people who were quite significant in their time but are completely forgotten.
• With comedy, you never know until you put it in front of an audience. You shoot it and a year later you have no idea if it’s going to work. And then you get the response. It’s great when it’s good.
• I just wanted to be in show business. I didn’t care if I was going to be an actor or a magician or what. Comedy was a point of the least resistance, really. And on the simplest level, I loved comedy.
• I understood that as much as I had resisted the outside, as much as I had constricted my life, as much as I had closed and narrowed the channels into me, there were still many takers for the quiet heart.
• I just don’t identify myself with a place. I just don’t get it. Like, why am I cheering for this town? Towns are good and bad but they don’t have principles, constitutions. You wouldn’t go to war for your town.
• I think films are about having a good time, so I don’t know that there’s a message. The message of a film is always what a critic writes, and the fun of a film or the emotion of a film is what the audience feels.
• Acting has helped me understand people, not only because you are acting as a character, but also because you are watching other actors work. That really helps you identify in life when someone is acting, not being true.
• A friend of mine once asked how to make it in show business and I said “Be so good that they can’t ignore you.” She thought I was being flip but it’s true. The challenge is trying to live up to the opportunities given me.
• When people ask me, ‘how do you make it in show business,’ or whatever, what I always tell them‚ and nobody ever takes note of it,cuz it’s not the answer they wanted to hear‚ but I always say, ‘Be so good they can’t ignore you.’
• I’ve run into people in my life who were so dramatic; people who are so extreme and so frustrating to be around that you end up thinking about them and talking about them for literally years after your experience with them is over.
• There’s a lot of thought in art. People get to talk about important things. There’s a lot of sex, you know, in art. There’s a lot of naked women and men, and there’s intrigue, there’s fakery. It’s a real microcosm of the larger world.
• The conscious mind is the editor, and the subconscious mind is the writer. And the joy of writing, when you’re writing from your subconscious, is beautiful – it’s thrilling. When you’re editing, which is your conscious mind, it’s like torture.
• I choose a project based on whether it feels worthwhile working on when it comes to me. But secondly I choose it if it sounds like fun. Projects are determined by just how they strike me at the moment, as they have done throughout my whole life.
• I did stand-up comedy for 18 years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four years were spent in wild success. I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a byproduct. The course was more plodding than heroic.
• As a human being on Earth, you can’t imagine friendship not being important in some other solar system or some other planet, or some other context of beings that are conscious. We even see it in animals. It is important for people on Earth to reach out or reach into someone.
• I had loved magic tricks from the time I was six or seven. I bought books on magic. I did magic acts for my parents and their friends. I was aiming for show business from early days, and magic was the poor man’s way of getting in: you buy a trick for $2, and you’ve got an act.
• I would say the three stages of making a film are the initial ‘are we gonna do this,’ ‘how much will I be paid,’ is there a lot of nights, who’s it going to be with? The second stage of doing a film is how much fun your going to have doing it. The third stage is was the film a hit?
• I loved to make people laugh in high school, and then I found I loved being on stage in front of people. I’m sure that’s some kind of ego trip or a way to overcome shyness. I was very kind of shy and reserved, so there’s a way to be on stage and be performing and balance your life out.
• I knew I wanted to be in show business so I took the path of least resistance. I loved comedy. But you never know you are funny until people laugh. It’s just what I was interested in. I could make people laugh, I guess, but doing it at school and doing it onstage are very different things.
• What I mean is that none of my talents had a – what’s that great word – rubric. A singer, an actor, a dancer – there was nothing I could really say I was. The writing came much later. And, actually, thank God, because if I had said I’m a singer, I would really have just had one thing to do.
• In a strange way, I don’t have a job, so I have a lot of time on my hands. When I do work, it might be very concentrated, and it might be months where you’re not really doing anything except maybe playing the banjo or writing something. You know, there’s a lot of time in the day if you’re not working 9 to 5.
• I don’t think anyone is ever writing so that you can throw it away. You’re always writing it to be something. Later, you decide whether it’ll ever see the light of day. But at the moment of its writing, it’s always meant to be something. So, to me, there’s no practicing; there’s only editing and publishing or not publishing.
• No matter how many times people say it – ‘Oh, I’m just writing this for myself’ ‘Oh, I’m just doing this for myself’ – nobody’s doing it for themselves! You’re doing it for an audience. So whether I’m performing or writing a book or playing music, it’s definitely to be put out there and to be received in some way, definitely.
• My fear represented the failure of the human system. It is a sad truth of our creation: Something is amiss in our design, there are loose ends of our psychology that are simply not wrapped up. My fears were the dirty secrets of evolution. They were not provided for, and I was forced to construct elaborate temples to house them.
• Your only guidepost is your own instinct and judicious editing. In my stand-up act I learned that in the first 10 minutes I could say anything and it would get a laugh. Then I’d better deliver. In the movie it’s the same thing. You get a lot of laughs when people first sit down and then the story better kick in. Many years in front of an audience, I would hope, give me a sense of what works.
• My most persistent memory of stand – up is of my mouth being in the present and my mind being in the future: the mouth speaking the line, the body delivering the gesture, while the mind looks back, observing, analyzing, judging, worrying, and then deciding when and what to say next. Enjoyment while performing was rare – enjoyment would have been an indulgent loss of focus that comedy cannot afford.
• I take editing seriously. It’s a joy to edit. I always hand a manuscript to several editors and can’t wait to get back their notes and see what they’ve said. I don’t criticize myself for making blunders here and there, because it’s just natural. You write in chunks, and you may not remember that that sentence you wrote yesterday had the same word repeated three times. I do enjoy that. I love the feeling of repairing. Repairing is really nice.

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On a lighter note

• She was feeling her bohemian oats.
• … you’re nuts but you’re welcome here.
• I’m hello, and I’d like to say myself.
• A day with out sun shine is like……….night
• A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.
• It’s not tipping I believe in. It’s overtipping.
• Teaching is, after all, a form of show business.
• All of life’s riddles are answered in the movies.
• All of life’s riddles are answered in the movies.
• Women have choices, and men have responsibilities.
• …teaching is, after all, a form of show business.
• Finally, we do become wise, but then it’s too late.
• The greatest thing you can do is surprise yourself.
• How many people have never raised their hand before?
• A father carries pictures where his money used to be.
• I got a flue shot and now my chimney works perfectly.
• It’s not what you know, it’s what you think you know.
• Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.
• Thankfully, perseverance is a good substitute for talent.
• I like a woman with a head on her shoulders. I hate necks.
• Why sip from a tea cup, when you can drink from the river.
• How to make a million dollars: First, get a million dollars
• Boy, those French: they have a different word for everything!
• A kiss may not be the truth, but it is what we wish were true.
• I’m tired of wasting letters when punctuation will do, period.
• The operation was a success, but I’m afraid the doctor is dead.
• Knowledge of means without knowledge of ends is animal training.
• You kill me and I’ll see that you never work in this town again.
• Comedy is the art of making people laugh without making them puke.
• Were they beautiful? We were all beautiful. We were in our twenties.
• We’ve had some fun tonight…considering we’re all gonna die someday.
• All I’ve ever wanted was an honest week’s pay for an honest day’s work.
• I just gave my cat a bath. Now how do I get all this fur off my tounge?
• I started a grease fire at McDonald’s – threw a match in the cook’s hair.
• To be with another woman, that is French. To be caught, that is American.
• You know that look that women get when they want to have sex? Me neither.
• I’ve got to keep breathing. It’ll be my worst business mistake if I don’t.
• It’s not the size of the nose that matters, it’s what’s inside that counts.
• Some people have a way with words, and other people…oh, uh, not have way.
• Somewhere in the world is…The world’s worst doctor and he could be yours.
• I’ve decided to take up smoking, my doctor said I wasn’t getting enough tar.
• I can’t smell moth balls, I find it too difficult to get their tiny legs apart
• I just downloaded eleven hundred books onto my Kindle, and now I can’t lift it.
• I was deeply unhappy, but I didn’t know it because I was so happy all the time.
• I will do anything to look like him – except, of course, exercise or eat right.
• When someone less capable is ahead of me, I am not pleased. It makes me insane.
• She had destroyed whatever was between us by making a profound gaffe: She met me.
• I cannot smell mothballs because it’s so difficult to get their little legs apart.
• First the doctor told me the good news: I was going to have a disease named after me.
• I could never be a woman, ’cause I’d just stay home and play with my breasts all day.
• I’m not trying to be a big shot or anything like that, but I get my drinks half price.
• I guess I wouldn’t believe in anything if it weren’t for my lucky astrology mood watch.
• I thought yesterday was the first day of the rest of my life but it turns out today is.
• Halle Berry is here, whose win last year broke down barriers for unbelievably hot women.
• Dinosaurs did not walk with humans. The evolutionary record says different. They gambled.
• Talent is the ability to say things well, but genius is the ability to, well, say things.
• These days it’s hard to look at a poodle without thinking what a good meal he would make.
• You know, you’re really nobody in L.A. unless you live in a house with a really big door.
• Don’t have sex man. It leads to kissing and pretty soon you have to start talking to them.
• So, while fitting in, she was like a wicked detail standing out against a placid background.
• I believe you should place a woman on a pedestal: high enough so you can look up  her dress.
• I never touched a gun in my life. That and that alone forever doomed me to middle management.
• I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper.
• I believe that sex is one of the most beautiful, natural, wholesome things that money can buy.
• Writer’s block is a fancy term made up by whiners so they can have an excuse to drink alcohol.
• I guess I wouldn’t believe in anything anymore if it weren’t for my lucky astrology mood watch.
• I have found that– just as in real life–imagination sometimes has to stand in for experience.
• I have decided to give the greatest performance of my life! Oh, wait, sorry, that’s tomorrow night.
• I believe Ronald Reagan can make this country what it once was… an Arctic region covered with ice.
• When I die, now don’t think that I’m a nut, don’t want no fancy funeral, just one like old King Tut.
• The Apple Pie Hubbub was a significant novel for me, because that’s when I first started using verbs.
• An apology? Bah! Disgusting! Cowardly! Beneath the dignity of any gentleman, however wrong he might be.
• I believe in equality. Equality for everybody. No matter how stupid they are or how superior I am to them.
• People come up to me and say “Steve, what is film editing?” And I say “How should I know? You’re the director.
• The banjo is such a happy instrument–you can’t play a sad song on the banjo – it always comes out so cheerful.
• There’s someone out there for everyone – even if you need a pickaxe, a compass, and night goggles to find them.
• A celebrity is any well-known TV or movie star who looks like he spends more than two hours working on his hair.
• With a cheery delicacy she divided my obsessions into three categories: acceptable, unacceptable, and hilarious.
• How is it possible to miss a woman whom you kept at a distance, so that when she was gone you would not miss her?
• I handed in a script last year and the studio didn’t change one word. The word they didn’t change was on page 87.
• I believe in eight of the ten commandments. I believe in going to church every Sunday… unless there’s a game on.
• Lacy was just as happy alone as with company. When she was alone, she was potential; with others she was realized.
• There is one thing I would break up over, and that is if she caught me with another woman. I won’t stand for that.
• The self-prepared dinner is a great time killer for lonely people and as much time should be spent on it as possible.
• Hollywood must be the only place on earth where you can be fired by a man wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a baseball cap.
• Hosting the Oscars is much like making love to a woman. It’s something I only get to do when Billy Crystal is out of town.
• He never complicates a desire by overthinking it, unlike Mirabelle, who spins a cocoon around an idea until it is immobile.
• You know what your problem is, it’s that you haven’t seen enough movies – all of life’s riddles are answered in the movies.
• Through the years, I have learned there is no harm in charging oneself up with delusions between moments of valid inspiration.
• I believe the United States should allow all foreigners in this country, provided they can speak our native language… Apache.
• I’ve put an umbrella in my mouth and opened it. I sat in a lemon-meringue pie. I’ve done terrible things to my dog with a fork.
• What is a movie star? A movie star is many things. They can be tall, short, thin, or skinny. They can be Democrats… or skinny.
• You want to know how I think art should be taught to children? Take them to a museum and say, ‘This is art, and you can’t do it.
• Yeah, well, we’re all writers, aren’t we? He’s a writer that hasn’t been published, and I’m a writer who hasn’t written anything.
• …the divided world of Aspen, where locals with a sense of entitlement were pitted against developers with a sense of condominiums.
• Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do criticize him, you’ll be a mile away and have his shoes.
• Anyone who’s ever worked with Meryl Streep always says the same thing: can that woman act! And what’s with all the Hitler memorabilia?
• I opened the show with this line: “I have decided to give the greatest performance of my life! Oh, wait, sorry, that’s tomorrow night.
• I’m for the Wall Street Occupiers. But will they accept me when they find out I sell packaged mortgage default instruments to children?
• Kids like my act because I’m wearing nose glasses. Adults like my act because there’s a guy who thinks putting on nose glasses is funny.
• She has learned that her body is precious and it mustn’t be offered carelessly ever again, as it holds a direct connection to her heart.
• There are some people that will not pick up a phone and call you, but if you knock on a door and talk to them, they’ll talk back to you.
• There is something going on now in Mexico that I happen to think is cruelty to animals. What I’m talking about, of course, is cat juggling.
• I couldn’t see his face, because the light came in from behind him and he was in shadow, and he said, “I am Picasso.” And I said, “Well, so what?
• The only thing that bothers me is if I’m in a restaurant and I’m eating and someone says, ‘Hey, mind if I smoke?’ I always say, ‘No. Mind if I fart?
• Be pompous, obese, and eat cactus. Be dull and boring and omnipresent. Criticize things you don’t know about. Be oblong and have your knees removed.
• Now let’s repeat the non-conformists’ oath: I promise to be different! I promise to be unique! I promise not to repeat things other people say! Good!
• Tweeting is really only good for one thing – it’s just good for tweeting… It is rewarding, because it’s just its own reward. It’s sort of like heaven.
• The thing about the banjo is when you first hear it, it strikes many people as what’s that? There’s something very compelling about it to certain people.
• I gave my cat a bath the other day…they love it. He sat there, he enjoyed it, it was fun for me. The fur would stick to my tongue, but other than that…
• I happened to take a photo, and there was my wife, my dog and my banjo, all in the same shot – and I thought, “Oh, that’s like a family portrait right there.”
• Be tasteless, rude, and offensive, Live in a swamp and be three dimensional, Put a live chicken in your underwear, Get all excited and go to a yawning festival.
• I have no fear, no fear at all. I wake up, and I have no fear. I go to bed without fear. Fear, fear, fear, fear. Yes, ‘fear’ is a word that is not in my vocabulary.
• I saw the movie, ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ and was surprised because I didn’t see any tigers or dragons. And then I realized why: they’re crouching and hidden.
• She didn’t even finish her last sentence; it just trailed off. I think the subject had changed in her head while her mouth had continued on the old topic, not realizing it was out of supplies.
• A girl who is willing to give every ounce of herself to someone, who could never betray her lover, who never suspects maliciousness of anyone, and whose sexuality sleeps in her, waiting to be stirred.
• I used to think a wedding was a simple affair. Boy and girl meet, they fall in love, he buys a ring, she buys a dress, they say I do. I was wrong. That’s getting married. A wedding is an entirely different proposition.
• In talking to girls I could never remember the right sequence of things to say. I’d meet a girl and say, Hi, was it good for you too? If a girl spent the night, I’d wake up in the morning and then try to get her drunk.
• I actually learned about sex watching neighborhood dogs. And it was good. Go ahead and laugh. I think the most important thing I learned was: Never let go of the girl’s leg, no matter how hard she tries to shake you off.
• I love money. I love everything about it. I bought some pretty good stuff. Got me a $300 pair of socks. Got a fur sink. An electric dog polisher. A gasoline powered turtleneck sweater. And, of course, I bought some dumb stuff, too.
• His view of the world is one that keeps his blood pressure low, sweeping the cholesterol from his relaxed, freeway-sized arteries. Everyone knows he is going to live till age ninety, although the question that goes begging is, what?
• If you’ve got a dollar and you spend 29 cents on a loaf of bread, you’ve got 71 cents left; But if you’ve got seventeen grand and you spend 29 cents on a loaf of bread, you’ve still got seventeen grand. There’s a math lesson for you.
• You know, a lot of people come to me and they say, “Steve, how can you be so fucking funny?” There’s a secret to it, it’s no big deal. Before I go out, I put a slice of bologna in each of my shoes. So when I’m on stage, I feel funny.
• I would like a wine. The purpose of the wine is to get me drunk. A bad wine will get me as drunk as a good wine. I would like the good wine. And since the result is the same no matter which wine I drink, I’d like to pay the bad wine price.
• I would assign every lie a color: yellow when they were innocent, pale blue when they sailed over you like the sky, red because I knew they drew blood. And then there was the black lie. That’s the worst of all. A black lie was when I told you the truth.
• When I first started doing my stand-up act, I played the banjo, did comedy, magic tricks, juggled, read poetry. I stuck it all in. I didn’t know you were supposed to just stand up and tell jokes. Essentially, that’s what my act became: those five elements – except I dropped the poetry.
• I studied with the Maharishi for many years, and really didn’t learn that much. But one thing that he taught me, I’ll never forget: ‘ALWAYS…’ no, wait– ‘NEVER…’ no, wait, it was ‘ALWAYS carry a litter bag in your car. It doesn’t take up much room, and if it gets full, you can toss it out the window.’
• Communication has changed so rapidly in the last 20 years, it’s almost impossible to predict what might occur even in the next decade. E-mail, which now sends data hurtling across vast distances at the speed of light, has replaced primitive forms of communication such as smoke signals, which sent data hurtling across vast distances at the speed of light.
• It’s so hard to believe in anything anymore, you know what I mean? It’s like, religion, you really can’t take it seriously, ’cause it seems so mythological, and seems so arbitrary; and then on the other hand, science is just pure empiricism, and by virtue of its method, it excludes metaphysics. I guess I wouldn’t believe in anything if it weren’t for my lucky astrology mood watch.
• I used to smoke marijuana. But I’ll tell you something: I would only smoke it in the late evening. Oh, occasionally the early evening, but usually the late evening – or the mid-evening. Just the early evening, midevening and late evening. Occasionally, early afternoon, early mid-afternoon, or perhaps the late-midafternoon. Oh, sometimes the early-mid-late-early morning. . . But never at dusk!