Actors From New York City

"When you're little, your life is up. The future is up. Everything you want is up. "Wait up! Hold up! Shut up!" "Mom, I'll clean up! Let me stay up!" For parents, of course, it's just the opposite: everything is down. "Just calm down!" "Slow down!" "Come down here!" "Sit down!" "Put that down!""

"No one is more judged in civilized society than the stand-up comedian. Every twelve seconds, you're rated."

"The word "pet peeve" is one of my biggest pet peeves, to tell you the truth."

"We all love Michael J. Fox. I'm a big fan of Michael J. Fox. I'm a big fan of Spin City. He plays the mayor, or something. I, on the other hand, play myself! And I guess last year, you people didn't quite buy me as me!"

"All I had to do was do [stand-up] once, and I didn't-- Really, success wasn't my objective; it was just "I wanna be one of those guys!" If I can be one of those guys, I'm-- I win everything!"

"I was petrified when [my parents] first saw me [perform]. Well, also: because I wasn't really funny as a kid, and I felt like I was, y'know, exposing this alter-ego. Y'know? Plus, here I am getting up on stage and manipulating these people, y'know, into laughing. It's a power thing! Y'know? And it's weird to do it in front of your parents."

"I get an idea, and I think "There's something funny about that." And I don't know what it is, at first; this is how my stuff usually works. Like, I saw-- like, McDonald's having a sign that says "60 Billion [Sold]". And I think "Now, that's-- y'know, there's something very funny about that: that a company of that size is still counting every burger. Y'know? I mean, there's some kind of insecurity there, that you're still thinking "How well-- Are we doing well?" "We're doing well. Aren't we doing well? Look at how many we've sold!""

"Why is commitment the kryptonite of men, super and otherwise? [...] The trouble is that, deep down, most of us men believe we have a great deal in common with superheroes. This is the secret truth of all male thinking. I'm not even supposed to be telling you this. When men are growing up and reading about Batman, Spiderman and Superman, these are not fantasies, these are options."

"Now they show you how detergents get out bloodstains on television: pretty violent image, there! I think if you've got a T-shirt with bloodstains all over it, maybe laundry isn't your biggest problem right now. Maybe you ought to get rid of the body before you do the wash."

"To me, clothes spend most of their lives waiting, if you look at it. In the closet, in the hamper, in the drawer. The shirts in your house right now are going "He never picks me...". Laundry day is their only exciting day, 'cause the washing machine is the nightclub of clothes. It's dark, bubbles happening; they're all kind of dancing around in there. A shirt grabs the underwear: "C'mon, babe, let's go!""

"Being engaged is-- you know what it's like to me? It's like being on the first part of the rollercoaster, where you're just goin' up: (makes ticking noises) "Boy, this looks pretty scary!""

"Dads feel they know enough about the world to start their own civilization. That's what the family is to them. The fathers think "The hell with life! I can invent my own people. My own rules for fashion. My own health and diet.""

"Dogs are broke their entire lives. And you know why they have no money? No pockets! They have no pockets. They see change on the street, there is nothing they can do about it."

"The dumbest thing of all, I think, you can think in a New York cab is "Well, the man knows what he's doing!" "I mean, he is driving a little fast, but he's a professional cab driver. He's got a cab driver's license; I can see it right there." I don't even know what it takes to get a cab driver's license. I think all you need is a face... and a name with, like, eight consonants in a row."

"The fact is: almost everything is funny. You just have to have a way of looking at it."

"I really feel that that's one of the big powers of adulthood, is the ability to be totally bored and remain standing. I think that's why they can set up the DMV that way."

"I always, y'know, idolized people like Bill Cosby and people that were just themselves. I mean, I think the idea of a comedian as someone that you relate to-- I think "comedy star" is almost an oxymoron. You don't look up to comedians like you look at Madonna or, y'know, Elvis, or people like that."

"Really good bits go deep into your head and keep comin' back."

"That's [my dad's] other big advice to me: "easy". I don't know what the hell that means. Every time we lift up something heavy, he goes "Easy now! Take it easy! Easy! Easy!" It's not easy; it's very difficult. Okay? You want easy? Leave it here in the hallway. That's easy."

"Jerry killed himself to make Seinfeld good. He and Larry David worked so hard, it is-- actually, it is impossible to describe. And they didn't just do it to make the show successful, because once it was successful, they worked even harder."

"You've always been one of the nicest guys in the business. [...] You've always been ethical, classy, smooth, and the best stand-up comic of our generation."

"Jerry Seinfeld, one of the greatest comedians of all time and one of the cockiest bastards to ever live. [...] To his credit, he writes some of the best jokes ever."

"I think the duck really is the perfect model of how to live: paddle as hard as you can beneath the surface, let everything else roll off your back, and have a little sense of humor about your appearance."

"The key to marriage -- of course -- is to make the other person happy. I tell all my guy friends: "Make your wife happy. You're not gonna be happy, so don't even worry about that. And that's good, 'cause that cuts your work in half!" And... further: that men don't want to be happy. We don't know what [happiness] is. We don't care what it is. We've never experienced it and couldn't be less interested in it. We just want to do whatever stupid thing it is that we're doing; that's men."

"Here's the great thing about writing: you don't have to do it. All you have to do is not do anything else in that time frame. So: you put your idea down and... now, you don't have to do anything. You just sit there and you eventually will realize "There's a problem here." Right? And your brain will naturally try and solve the problem, and the next thing you know, you're writing! So, it's not about forcing yourself to write; it's about creating a -- what do we call it? -- a "discrete space". Is that the right word? So, that's how you write: create a place and time where that's what's happening... but you don't have to write! Just be there with the problem."

"I always describe my upbringing as "benign neglect": that I was-- I really felt like my parents were just letting me live there 'til I grew up."

"My first bit that I thought "That's a real bit!" was about the tramway between Manhattan and Roosevelt Island. 1976: the city was going bankrupt. I go "Oh! That's great! They're putting up rides for us! Next thing, I guess they'll be putting up a rollercoaster through the ghetto!""

"No one else has his work ethic or his clarity of vision, his passion for the craft."

"The concept of writing is so alien-- actual writing is so alien to most comedians."

"There's something about [writing] -- whether it's a cubicle allegory, or it's a homework or schoolwork metaphor -- there's something about it that totally repels the comic mind. "I can't-- I'm not doin' that. That's work!" Which it is, but only in the beginning! Only in the first ten, fifteen minutes, right? Then, you're kind of havin' fun! You're makin' up stuff. Who cares if it works? Who cares?"

"The guy on stage: I made that up. The real me is alone, in the room; that's who I am. I learned that-- the skill of people."

"Stories about your children are not good stories. They're not interesting, amusing, or relatable. [...] That took me a long time to learn. And a lot-- I have a lot of friends with kids that don't know it: what happened with your kid this morning at breakfast is not funny."

"Most of the time, comedians: we are expected to be the most agile, in terms of how we think and construct our thoughts and our-- what comes out of our mouth[s]. That's how we got the job. Y'know? So, I'm not really worried about [...] comedians as a group. We have been navigating these slalom gates forever."

"I don't hear the applause when I come out [on stage]. I have no interest in that. 'Cause that's for the past. They're saying "We like what you've done in the past." And that's not what tonight's about. Tonight's about tonight. We gotta make this happen tonight. I want you to go home tonight and go "We saw a great show.""

"A joke is a miracle."

"I was lucky in that I was introduced to fame very-- in a very slow, incremental way."

"I think people like a little more "personal revelation" in their comedy. And that's fine! They have-- There's three generations behind me doin' it. But my thing is: I want a number of jokes of a certain quality, and laughs. I want the room to just be ringin with laughs."

"When you hear a curse word in the last line of [a comedian's] bit... that's when you know: "not solved." (laughs) "That puzzle was not solved.""

"The reason I got [Seinfeld] is: my manager, George Shapiro, wrote a note to Brandon Tartikoff, the President of NBC, and it was one sentence; he said "Call me a crazy guy, but I think some day Jerry Seinfeld's gonna be doing a series on NBC." Now, when he wrote that note, it was... 1988. I had been on The Tonight Show for seven years -- three times a year -- destroying. [...] And George still [had] to say to NBC "I know this sounds crazy...". I thought of this just the other week: "What was so crazy about the idea?""

"I want to look like my heroes from the '60s. I want to look like Frank Gorshin, and old George Carlin, and Alan King. I love[d] those guys. So, I wanted to be those guys."

"I really think an honest minimum is five years between [hour specials]. That would be a really honest-- and workin' hard!"

"If you like a daily slight terror, you will like being a stand-up comedian."

"Comedy is so much closer to sports than the arts. Stand-up comedy is very, very close to sports: in the life of it, and the "do or die" of it. [...] Nobody cares how many hits you've had. There's guys on base now."

"That was the dominance of network television at that time. There was no competition. [Theirs] was the only game in town. A guy like me-- Could you ima-- I would never have gotten past my second set, today, before they would've grabbed me! Right? "Hey, this guy's pretty good!" "Just grab him! Let's do-- Somebody come up with somethin' for this kid!""

"Every car has a personality. Every car is trying to say something to the world."

"On [Seinfeld], we were extremely meticulous in our scripting of every scene, every joke, every line. [...] When people came on that show, they were told by script supervisors "You don't change one comma", because that's-- the precision of joke-making generally requires that."

"There's no "putting an act together". Okay? A stand-up comedian is an act. You are an act. You breathe and live an act. It's not assembled; it's not-- This is not Hello, Dolly!. It's constant, it's organic; you live inside it. It's like a snow globe. Comedy is a snow globe. You live in it."

"Cars are really the most sophisticated adult toys that you can use without having to really talk to anybody."

"Stand-up comedy's also the most mysterious profession in show business. It's completely shrouded in [the] mystery of "How do these people do it?" [...] Only other comedians understand it. It's like, y'know, being a cop or a prostitute: you can only hang out with other people [who] do that."

"You have the Sun-Maid company, and then you have the Raisinet people. I just think it's interesting that after 80 years, Sun-Maid finally went "Hey, why don't we put some chocolate on it?" Like, imagine not thinking of that for 80 years!"