Actors From New York City

"You're not a star until they can spell your name in Karachi."

"[to a fan that called out to him] What'd you yell out?...Mother Goose. So what you're saying is you wanna review 1989?"

"You know, a lot of guys, you know, like, what I'll do, you know, especially in New York - out in L.A., they don't have a subway system. But here they do, and a lot of people don't like it, but I know how to use the subway system. Like, I'll set my alarm clock for 8 o'clock, 'cause I don't even have a day job. This is what I do, you know - but I'll get on those rush-hour trains at 8 o'clock for that 8 o'clock grind...you're passin' every chick in the train, you got your dick lodged behind 400 asses before you hit DeKalb Avenue...you drop a load, you turn around, you're back in bed before 9 o'clock, your day has started."

"Go ahead, marry her. Don't marry her, man. How do you know where she's been? Huh! How do you know she's not the biggest fucking whore to ever walk this fucking town, man? I went with this one girl, she was such a fucking tramp, I had to double park my dick on her ass and wait an hour to get in. It's unfuckingbelievable, I'm telling ya."

"You ever date a chick with a hunch-fucking-back? I did. I’m in a grocery store with this chick. The security guards were all over her because they thought she was trying to smuggle a turkey under the back of her fucking jacket. I had a hunch. I had a hunch they’d stop her with that bad fucking back. They should have a telethon for hunchbacks. That’s- that’s what I think. They bring ‘em out on a string like a pack of camels. [mimics a hunchback walking] “Bump be dump bump.” I think something could be done. Chip the fucking thing off. You ever date a chick with buck-fucking-teeth and a hunch-fucking-back? Huh? Oh, just trying to talk to a bucktooth fucking chick is incredible. [Forces his mouth into an overbite] “Hey, you want to go to a movie?” “Shut up, stupid! Pop the cork on this bottle.” And to make love to a chick with buck-fucking-teeth and a hunch-fucking-back is a complete horror show. You’re in bed with them and it’s like you’re on a seesaw. You know what I’m saying? They’re like, [forces his mouth into an overbite again] “Ugh, it feels so good. It feels so good.” Shut up!"

"I like a bush. A nice big, hairy, stinky, smelly fucking bush. And I hate when they put cologne on it. They dummy it up with cologne like you don’t know where you are. I like that nice natural scent of salmon."

"What am I looking at? I want to eat you like a tossed fucking salad!"

"Korean delis, Indian newsstands, Greek diners, and ass-fuckin' parties every night of the week! That's New York, how are ya?!"

"When you jerk off, you’re saying, “Hey, I care about me.”"

"How come there's no parking for midgets? You ever notice that? Not one spot in the fucking mall for midgets. Unbelievable. You want to know why? 'Cause there's no telethon for midgets. Nobody gives a fuck. The kind of humidity you get in Manhattan during the summer... by the time you even get to the front doors of the mall, they're passing out. You've got to piss on them to revive them. And I love midgets with those pumpkin heads, little bug legs. I never fucked one, I'll admit that. But I would do it. They're people. So they're a little light, all right. So, so you stick 'em on your dick, you can shave, shower, they don't get in the way. You throw 'em in a drawer when you're done. "Yeah, use my socks as a pillow honey." "Wait, a mouse went under the table, get the fucker." Could you imagine being a maitre d at a fancy restaurant and a couple midgets come in for dinner? What do you say? “Table for, ugh, I don't know, fuck, three quarters?" Midgets, man. What do they do when a midget is missing? Put 'em on the back of a container of Half & Half?"

"Part of the loot went for gambling, part for horses, and part for women. The rest I spent foolishly."

"Mel [Gibson] will always be Mad Max, and me, I will always be a number."

"The village is a place that is trying to destroy the individual by every means possible; trying to break his spirit, so that he accepts that he is Number Six and will live there happily as Number Six for ever after. [...] And this is the one rebel that they can't break."

"When they did finally see it, there was a near-riot and I was going to be lynched. And I had to go into hiding in the mountains for two weeks, until things calmed down. That's really true!"

"I'm not a big fan of the "long set" in comedy. Guys like to go on, like to do an hour and 45 minutes. The audience will win if you stay out there too long! [...] I want to go out. I want to get you down. I want to beat the snot out of you and get out of there before you realize that I... beat the odds!"

"I know people would want a-- a [Seinfeld] reunion show. That's what I want. My theory of show business is "Do not give the public what it wants." [...] When people stop asking you for the reunion, then you know you've blown it."

"If you really want to make money, never make a decision based on money. 'Cause if you make-- if you chase money, you're gonna get less of it. If you chase a thing that you love -- that's interesting -- only because you love that thing, you'll make more money. I-- I just believe that's-- in the arts, that's the only way to make money, is to never consider money as a part of your decision."

"Comedy -- and show business -- is-- look: either I win, or you win. There's no truce! Same thing with television: I knew that [Seinfeld]-- I knew-- look: either you're gonna kill me, or I'm gonna kill you. And after nine years, I was still killin' that series, but that series would eventually have killed me."

"If you want to be funny, you've got to have energy. Energy sells jokes. All sales requires energy, but stand-up is a hard sell. I'm sellin' you somethin' you don't even need!"

"[Stand-up is] a martial art. It's voice, it's action, it's gesture; and everything is synchronized to land on that [weakest] point. You ever watch these karate guys? They hit that brick: it's a perfect arrow that hits that target, and when it-- and it's perfect! It's a concentration of energy. And that's what elicits the laugh."

"Stand-up is now easy to learn, harder to master because once you get halfway decent at it, [...] you can do other things. And if you do one other thing, you're not gonna get good at it; it's just too damn hard."

"The first thing I want to do [on stage] is: I want you to have confidence in me. Well, how am I gonna do that? I'm gonna take the joke that fails the least amount of [the] time, and I'm gonna put that at the front of the set. It's just tech-- it's scientific technique. [...] If the first thing I say gets a laugh: at that moment, 100% of everything I've said gets a laugh! And now, I've got your confidence."

"Stand-up is a physical challenge. It is a mental challenge, but equally physical. And when you're young, of course, it's a breeze! 'Cause you're blessed with youth. Y'know? The ultimate weapon is youth, in life."

"The specific element that occurs in every single successful joke is surprise. Surprise. A line of logic is going one way, and then, it doesn't. I call it "making non-sense". You go "That doesn't make any sense, but I get it." That-- That's the words that people use to describe a joke: "I got it.""

"I find things that you've thought of, but don't-- that you're aware of, but haven't really analyzed. And that's the whole act!"

"That's the first thing an audience wants to feel when someone gets up on a stage: "Does this person know what they're doing?" "'Cause if they do, then I can relax." And when you're trying to elicit laughter, that's-- they have to be relaxed. If they're worried about you, the laughs are harder to get."

"Funny is the-- is the world that I live in. You're funny? I'm interested. You're not funny? I'm not interested."

"We worked to death. Y'know? That's what Larry and I did. We did not rest, we did not... spare an ounce of effort; we would just order people out of the room: "Get out! Get out! We're working!" Y'know? And we-- And that's why those scripts were as good as they were: 'cause when they got to that table, and those actors got 'em, they were worked. So: is that luck? I don't think so. That wasn't luck. That was-- We earned that."

"When I think of the things that I love: more than money, more than love, more than... just about anything, I love energy. I love it. And I pursue it."

"Stand-up is a very scientific and very exhaustive study of the human experience."

"We improvised virtually nothing [on Seinfeld], as a matter of fact. That's how good the actors were, that it sometimes seems like they are improvising. But we also knew each other so well that we knew exactly what sentences to put in their mouths that would seem natural."

"The way I look at life, basically, is: it's exhausting. And... (laughs) Doing-- Being busy is exhausting; doing nothing is exhausting. No matter what you do... as a human -- on Earth -- it's exhausting."

"I don't separate the mind and the body, as a thing. If my body's tired, my mind's tired; if my mind's tired, my body's tired. [...] People say "Mind and body! Mind and body!", and that-- and I dismiss that separation completely."

"I would go so far as to say that was the key to the entire [Seinfeld] show, was that we really felt like together we were funny, and then the audience felt it, and that's how you can somehow catch lightning in a bottle."

"Writer's block is a phony, made up, BS excuse for not doing your work."

"I would say that I am 90% serious in my day. Comedy is no joke."

"Nobody goes berserk eating in the morning. You never wake up in the morning and eat a decent breakfast, and then attack a box of brownies. You don't do it. But at night, we all do it! Why? We're tired. And when you're tired, your willpower goes away. Willpower requires energy."

"When I heard that they were going to do a sitcom with a secret agent who was funny, that it was going to be a comedy secret agent TV show, and it was going to be called "Get Smart," the back of my head blew off. So that was really my favorite show when I was a kid."

"You may have noticed that I tend to quit things soon after doing them, like TV series, animated movies, book writing, broadway plays. I do feel very strongly in stopping the second I feel like I'm not excited anymore, whatever I'm doing."

"The only line I quote from [Seinfeld] [...] is "If you're one of us, you'll take a bite." [...] Sometimes I'll quote Newman in flames screaming "Oh the humanity.""

"Newman would be my favorite supporting character. I mean, when I got to have a real evil nemesis like Superman would have, that was a dream come true for me."

"I was happy with the Seinfeld finale because we didn't want to do another episode as much as we wanted to have everybody come back to the show we had so much fun with. It was a way to thank all of the people who worked on the show over the years that we thought made the show work."

"There was [an] incredible amount of luck -- good luck -- that I had, that made [Seinfeld] what it was. On the other hand, I could argue against that. I could say "I'm the one who said to Larry David: 'Y'know, when you and I talk, it's really funny. We should write something together'.""

"[Larry and I] never obsess over anything that isn't mundane."

"When I started out in comedy in the 70s, if you didn't do clean humor you weren't getting on TV, so I started doing that so I could be on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. And then when I saw what other people were doing, I just always wanted to be a little different."

"That's one of-- a beautiful thing about having kids, is you reproduce people that you can relate to."

"I chose comedy because I thought it seemed much easier than work. And more fun than work. It turned out to be much harder than work, and not easy at all. But you still don't have to ever really grow up. And that's the best thing of all."

"The pitch for [Seinfeld], the real pitch, when Larry and I went to NBC in 1988, was we want to show how a comedian gets his material. The show about nothing was just a joke in an episode many years later, and Larry and I to this day are surprised that it caught on as a way that people describe the show, because to us it's the opposite of that."

"Never try and make a comedian laugh with one of his own jokes."

"If you can walk to work or take your bike on a daily basis, I think that's just about the coolest thing that there is. Every morning I listen to the traffic [report] on the radio, and they talk about how they are jammed and I just laugh."