There is a cliche that probably has some anecdotal evidence on the side that comedians are very depressed people, but that's because no one is ever going to seem as funny in a normal conversation as compared to when they're up there onstage in the spotlight making a huge audience keel over with laughter.
A lot of my stories about the old days, they're delicious and funny. But every time I recall the early days, it's painful. With every anecdote, it's painful because you're summoning up the terribly, terribly difficult life of my parents. And it's painful because I didn't realize at the time how hard it was for them.
I'm not funny in person. I mean I'm really not. I'm one of those people who always screw up anecdotes.
I tend to develop my rambling anecdotes by actually getting up and performing them. That's the joy/horror of stand up - if you have the germ of an idea that you think might be funny, there is a way of finding out if it's funny very quickly.
It's much better to wreak havoc on a show and be a maniac than promote myself. Plugs and anecdotes aren't really in line with my beliefs. Besides, if someone sees me on a morning show and thinks, 'That's not funny; this guy is crazy,' then I don't want them to come to the show anyway.
It was a long time ago: 'Angela's Ashes' by Frank McCourt. It was a great story that was lasting, and I loved it so much. I also love Nora Ephron. I gobble up everything she writes. Also, I love Anthony Bourdain, very irreverent and funny.
I used to write out of angst. My writing was quite miserable, quite angry, even when it was funny. It was based on this sadness and tired emotional disdain for the world.
My goal is to show people that conservatives are funny. In fact, we're the rebels: we're 'Animal House.'
I don't think it's any coincidence that I lost my religious faith and 'manned up' in the same year. I was described somewhere as a lapsed Catholic, which is funny because I'm not going back! I want to achieve things rather than live life in an animalistic way.
I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me.
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
I love readings and my readers, but the din of voices of the audience gives me stage fright, and the din of voices inside whisper that I am a fraud, and that the jig is up. Surely someone will rise up from the audience and say out loud that not only am I not funny and helpful, but I'm annoying, and a phony.
Being funny wasn't a career choice growing up, it was my way out of situations; a way to survive another day.
A dear friend of my early childhood has worked as an anthropologist in Papua New Guinea for much of her life, and from the tiny island where her main work has been focused, she has brought me many funny and beautiful stories over the years.
A nickel ain't worth a dime anymore.
It may sound funny, but I love the South. I don't choose to live anywhere else. There's land here, where a man can raise cattle, and I'm going to do it some day.
It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
A transposable aphorism is a malaise of the urge to be witty, or in other words, a maxim that is untroubled by the fact that the opposite of what it says is equally true so long as it appears to be funny.
I was born in Paris in the mid-1960s, and by the time I was 12 I had started going to the movies by myself. Most of the movies of that period never appealed to me. I didn't like the 'naturalism,' the sad or the 'down-to-earth' characters. What I wanted from film was fantasy, dreams, funny situations, extravagant decor - and beautiful women.
I'm screamingly funny, you know, I really am in the books. And that helps because I'm funnier than a lot of people, I think, and that's appreciated by young people.
