“If you try to deliver a funny line in a funny way, it comes out as wacky and you ruin the scene.”

I’m a standup comedian who gets to act. I’m never going to not do standup. I love doing it and when I go through periods where I’m doing a lot of acting work, I still do standup.

I just do my act. If people in England don’t get my joke I make fun of myself for telling it.

Patrice O’Neal is the best comic I ever saw.

Nothing worse than when a 6 acts like a 10.

Really? Is it long enough to go around both our necks and the chimney so we can tandem jump off of this? That’s all I really care about you and your little garden hose.

[I’m] more German than Irish.

Being a stand-up comic, this isn’t a stepping-stone for me; it’s what I do, and this is what I’m always going to do. And even if I do a TV show, the only reasons to do a TV show is to get more people to know me to come out to my stand-up shows.

I mean, stand up you’re by yourself and it’s live and when you’re acting, unless you’re doing a monologue, you’re interacting with somebody else. Even if you’re doing a monologue you’re saying it to somebody and it’s not live so you can do it a few times.

A little good advice, a little bad advice.You go to Las Vegas, there’s like a devil and a devil and they’re just battling it out the whole time. It’s like, “Smoke some crack!” “Get a hooker!” And then I go, “YEA! Yea, this is a good town. Smoke some crack and get a hooker! Alright!”

You’re a kid, your whole life is awesome. It’s awesome, right? You had no money, no ID, no cell phone, no nothing, no keys to the house. You just ran outside into the woods. You weren’t scared of nothing. I challenge you to do that as an adult.

Something that’s going to get the blood going. Or you can let those thoughts take you right down the rabbit hole.

I’ve battled with that type of stuff, but what I’ve found is that by doing stand-up, I’ve actually learned about depression and how to combat it. I don’t have clinical, but I’ve definitely had my bouts with it.

You know, it wasn’t even that I’m a funny guy, I just loved stand-up comedy and I wanted to do it. It was one of the few things in my life that I knew I was going to be able to do, and I also felt as though I’d be able to do it the way I wanted to do it.

I think it’s a privilege to be able to fly to somewhere where people want to see my show.

When you say, “there’s no reason [to hit a woman]” that kills any examination as to how two people ended up at that place. When you say, “there’s no reason,” you cut out the build-up and you’re just left with the act. How you gonna solve it if you don’t figure it out?

I used to think you had to live this miserable life and that that would make you funnier, but you don’t. The misery will come. The misery will find you.

The line was originally, ‘Captain Phillips, get a load of me: fancy-free on the seven seas,’ but I ad-libbed.

Almost all countries have natural dividing lines, and when ethnic and religious partition occurs in one country, it’ll soon happen elsewhere.

The times are squalid. They always were. It is a poet’s duty to hold the line.

I find very often people like to confront rumors. It depends on how much they trust you. And you have to have a line between what is tasteful and what isn’t.

I hear these melodies. I hear horn lines and string lines. That’s what’s fun about recording with an orchestra.

One of the flabby lines you hear sometimes is, ‘Speak truth to power’. Power knows the truth. It’s speaking the truth to yourself that’s the challenge.

Mindy Kaling gets her own line in the acknowledgments, as previously negotiated by her representatives. Thanks, Mindy. I love you and you’re the best.

Once killing starts, it is difficult to draw the line.