comedians-from-new-york-city

"This week we saw the horrible images and stories from Israel and Gaza, and I know what you're thinking: "Who better to comment on it than Pete Davidson?" Well, in a lot of ways, I am a good person to talk about it because when I was seven years old, my dad was killed in a terrorist attack. So I know something about what that's like. I saw so many terrible pictures this week of children suffering — Israeli children and Palestinian children. And It took me back to a really horrible, horrible place. No one in this world deserves to suffer like that, especially not kids, ya know? After my dad died, my mom tried pretty much everything she could do to cheer me up. I remember one day when I was eight, she got me what she thought was a Disney movie but it was actually the Eddie Murphy stand-up special, Delirious. We played it in the car on the way home, and when she heard the things Eddie Murphy was saying, she tried to take it away. But then she noticed something — for the first time in a long time, I was laughing again. I don't understand it, I really don't and I never will, but sometimes comedy is really the only way forward through tragedy. My heart is with everyone whose lives have been destroyed this week. But tonight, I'm gonna do what I've always done in the face of tragedy, and that's try to be funny. Remember, I said TRY."

"I would go to where [famous comedians] were, with an enormous tape recorder from the AV squad, and I would lie and say it was a real radio station. And when I got there, a child … had just shown up, and they would realize they got duped. But, they would talk to me anyway because they were really nice. And I would just say to Seinfeld, "How do you write a joke?" And I would force him to walk me through it. Or, I interviewed Harold Ramis: "How do you write a movie?" And those interviews changed my life because they really told me. It was my college. I had my college [education] in junior [year] of high school. I was just so obsessed, so I thought, "I'm gonna try to interview every original writer from Saturday Night Live. So, I interviewed Al Franken and Tom Davis and—. … What would happen is someone would be nice—like Alan Zweibel. I'd interview him and he would take out the phonebook and say, "I'm gonna hook you up with this person," and he would start giving me all the phone numbers. And I was obsessive. I was always trying to get Andy Kaufman, but … at the time he was always down south wrestling. And I would call his management office and they'd say, "We don't even know where he is.""

"I've had so much plastic surgery, when I die they will donate my body to Tupperware."

"I wish I had a twin, so I could know what I'd look like without plastic surgery."

"Don't tell your kids you had an easy birth or they won't respect you. For years I used to wake up my daughter and say, 'Melissa, you ripped me to shreds. Now go back to sleep.'"

"There is not one female comic who was beautiful as a little girl."

"I succeeded by saying what everyone else is thinking."

"My routines come out of total unhappiness. My audiences are my group therapy."

"Why do wives have to spend so much time dusting, vacuuming, mopping, making beds, washing dishes, when you just have to do it all again six months later?"

"No one loved life, laughter and a good time more than Joan. We would have dinner and laugh and gossip and I always left the table smiling. She was a brassy, often outrageous and hilarious performer who made millions laugh. In private, she was the picture of elegance and class. I will miss her."

"You know you are getting old when work is a lot less fun and fun is a lot more work."

"Two is company; three is fifty bucks."

"Never floss with a stranger."

"[Catchphrase:] Can we talk?"

"Before we make love, my husband takes a pain killer."

"I'm Jewish. I don't work out. If God had wanted us to bend over, he would have put diamonds on the floor."

"Looking fifty is great—if you're sixty."

"My obstetrician was so dumb that when I gave birth he forgot to cut the cord. For a year that kid followed me everywhere. It was like having a dog on a leash."

"I hate housework! You make the beds, you do the dishes—and six months later you have to start all over again."

"People say money is not the key to happiness, but I've always figured if you have enough money you can get a key made."

"I knew I was an unwanted baby when I saw that my bath toys were a toaster and a radio."

"Don't follow any advice, no matter how good, until you feel as deeply in your spirit as you think in your mind that the counsel is wise."

"A man can sleep around, no questions asked, but if a woman makes nineteen or twenty mistakes she's a tramp."

"My best birth control now is just to leave the lights on."

"Anger is a symptom, a way of cloaking and expressing feelings too awful to experience directly—hurt, bitterness, grief and, most of all, fear."

"It's been so long since I made love, I can't even remember who gets tied up."

"[Catchphrase:] Oh, grow up!"

"I have so little sex appeal that my gynecologist calls me "sir.""

"I've been a Democrat my whole life. That's what makes Maude and Dorothy so believable, we have the same viewpoints on how our country should be handled."

"I watch news programs and I love Comedy Central. I love The Daily Show-it's smarter than anything else. I also like The Critic and Celebrity Death Match and South Park. I love all of that."

"You know, the way I'm accepted, I almost feel like Judy Garland, truly. It makes no sense to me because I don't think that I've been any more outspoken... Or maybe I have, I don't know. But everyone I know supports anything that has to do with raising money or with AIDS."

"There were subjects we tackled that had never been even discussed, like I had an abortion. Nobody ever talked about that."

"PETA has a proven track record of success. Each victory PETA wins for the animals is a stepping stone upon which we build a more compassionate world for all beings - and we will never give up our fight until all animals are treated with respect and kindness."

"I can't imagine working without an audience."

"I suddenly realized that comedy, for me, was just being honest, and playing it for real. I've seen so many wonderful actors who turn into creatures from another planet when they're told they are supposed to be playing comedy. I... was not too happy to suddenly take on this public role thrust upon me. They just assumed I was the Joan of Arc of the women's movement. And I wasn't at all. It put a lot of unnecessary pressure on me. I'd never even been to Wrigley Field. I never even enjoyed baseball that much, but I loved being there, the crowd was lovely, and they all sang with me!"

"Making lasting gifts for animals in our estate plans is perhaps the single most important thing we can do to ensure animals have the strongest possible voice for their protection."

"It was like the Beatles had arrived, you know. These four elderly ladies, and they were screaming for us-screaming for us. It was wonderful."

"I... was not too happy to suddenly take on this public role thrust upon me. They just assumed I was the Joan of Arc of the women's movement. And I wasn't at all. It put a lot of unnecessary pressure on me."

"That town was stifling. Three of us got out. Me, John Barth and the guy who wrote "You Are My Sunshine." My dream was to become a very small blonde movie star like and those other women I saw up there on the screen during the Depression."

"I tour the South, though, I do. I love touring the South. Some people up North are afraid of the South, it's weird. I'll do a show in, like, Alabama. I'll tell someone I did a show in Alabama and they'll be like, "Oh my God! What was that like?" Oh, you know, chairs, a microphone. Oh, I'm sorry, I know what you're looking for. I'll tell you what it was like. Well, I flew into Birmingham. The Imperial Wizard from the Klan picked me up at the airport. Rode to the club on the back of an old mule. Tried to get a joke out over the shouts of "jewboy go home." At the end of the night I go "Where's my check?" They go, "You're not gettin' a check. You're gettin' this bag of porkrinds." Is that the answer you were looking for, you narrow-minded fake-liberal fuck?"

"People lose their senses at the beach 'cause the sun beats down too hard. They say things that just don't gel, you know. Well, you've heard this a lot: "Pick up a shell - oh, you can hear the ocean!" You could pick up a bicycle and hear the ocean - you're at the beach. Put the shell down, you'll hear the ocean twice as loud."

"John always said he had three favorite women. Fanny Brice, Carole Lombard and me."

"Your audience gives you everything you need. They tell you. There is no director who can direct you like an audience. You step out on the stage and you can feel it is a nervous audience. So you calm them down. I come out before an audience and maybe my house burned down an hour ago, maybe my husband stayed out all night, but I stand there. I'm still. I don't move. I wait for the introduction. Maybe I cough. Maybe I touch myself. But before I do anything, I got them with me, right there in my hand and comfortable. That's my job, to make them comfortable, because if they wanted to be nervous they could have stayed home and added up their bills."

"Let the world know you as you are, not as you think you should be, because sooner or later, if you are posing, you will forget the pose, and then where are you?"

"I took over the Moran and Mack spot and wowed them. The theater owner's report to the booker of the entire circuit was a glowing review. A week later I was booked on a bigger circuit. I kept working and polishing my act until the GIANT door opened for me and there was the big time ... the Palace Theater [sic] on Broadway. P.S. If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door."

"All I can say is at 82, if I had it to live over again, I'd live it the same, sweet — or not so sweet — way. At 82, I feel like a 20-year-old. But unfortunately, there's never one around."

"I think that anyone who is full of life loves repetition. For example, a child. You put a child on your knee and tell the child a story, the child will say, "Do it again." You blow smoke through your nose or through your ears, and the child will say, "Do it again." And God is full of life, and every morning He says to the sun, "Do it again," and every evening He says to the moon and stars, "Do it again," and every time a child is born into the world, He asks for a divine encore and says, "Do it again." And, Milton, for sixty years you've entertained us, and you've made us laugh, and we say to you, "Milton, do it again.""

"Fulton J. Sheen, October 13, 1973, addressing a banquet commemorating Berle's 60th year in show business; as quoted in Milton Berle: An Autobiography (1974), p. 325"

"A lot of sexual harassment stuff in the news, and I couldn't help but notice a very disturbing pattern emerging, which is that many of the predators, not all, but many of them are Jews"

"Listen, this is crazy. I look like I'm 75 years old. Nobody wants to watch an old man being funny. That's just a fact. No one wants to see this old man on TV."