Comedians From The United States

"You know how the old people drive? They drive slow, they sit low. That is their motto. The state flag of Florida should be just a steering wheel with a hat and two [sets of] knuckles on it. And then that left turn signal on from when they left the house that morning. That's a legal turn in Florida: it's known as an eventual left."

"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!""

"I would say the advice I would give [my younger self], or any young person, would be "Keep your head up in failure, and your head down in success.""

"Truthfully, I loved working on every episode [of Seinfeld], we just had the best time and got along great, and there were a number of years when the show wasn't successful and we still loved it."

"I think funny is always kind of time-proof, so I think [Seinfeld] could have worked even today. Obviously it would have been a completely different type of show. But you know, what made the show work was the bringing together a bunch of great actors & great writers in one place at one time."

"I felt as a child that i related more to blue than my own name. I have a very powerful connection with that color. And it's always been extremely important to me. It's weird, I don't understand it myself, but there's certain blues - Jeep Wrangler makes a blue that will make me stop walking on the sidewalk, and just turn and stare at it."

"I was very surprised by Festivus catching on, but I think people just like the line rhyming Festivus with "rest of us" is 90% of it. And no presents, and you don't have to buy decorations, it's just an aluminum pole."

"Do the people that work in these little shops in the airport have any idea what the prices are every place else in the world? "Yeah, $14, tuna sandwich. We think that's fair.""

"The whole supermarket itself is designed to break down your sense of having any life outside the supermarket. It's like a casino: there's no clocks, no windows, no easily-accessible exits. You ever not buy anything in the supermarket and try to get out of there? It's impossible. There's no way out."

"A cat is a small sneaky animal that manages to get by without any real relationships."

"I'm very good at streamlining a series of activities so that everything gets done in the amount of time that I have. I am very good with the clock. Like if I have a lot of stuff to do and a limited amount of time, I'm very good at figuring it all out. I'm very efficient in everything that i do, I never waste time so that I have more time to waste."

"No. Books take a long time, and I don't get to hear the laughs."

"I could have easily done [Seinfeld] for one or two or three more years, but it would have changed the way people look back at it. I think I made the right decision. Because people like the show now even more than they did in the 1990s, because it didn't get worn out."

"There is a similar kind of feel for rhythm and tone in comedy as there is in music, I think. You have to, you know, words - you use words in the same careful way in a song that you use them in a joke. Having just the right word in just the right place seems to make it work."

"I'm very impressed with this seedless watermelon product that they have for us. They've done it! We now have seedless watermelon. Pretty amazing! What are they planting to grow the seedless watermelon, I wonder? The melons aren't humpin', are they? They must be plantin' somethin'!"

"I saw a thing, actually-- a study that said: speaking in front of a crowd is considered the #1 fear of the average person. I found that amazing! #2 was death. Death is #2? This means, to the average person, if you have to be at a funeral, you would rather be in the casket than doing the eulogy."

"At one point, in the early 80s, I got a part on a sitcom called Benson. And I was on the show for 3 episodes, and then I got fired. And I thought that would be the only break I was ever going to get. It was just a youthful lack of perspective. But at the time, I thought that was it. But it really ended up making me really get into being a much better standup comedian so that I wouldn't be dependent on other people. It ended up being a good thing. The best things in my life have been the bad things that taught me stuff."

"It really is funny, it's very easy for me to remember that [Seinfeld] was very unsuccessful for a number of years, the first 4 years, and I remember thinking "I don't know why people don't seem to like this, it seems so funny to me." But I never thought it was going to be a big success. But it worked out."

"[Death is] the last big move of your life. The hearse is like the van, the pallbearers are your close friends, the only ones you could really ask to help you with a big move like that. And the casket is that great, perfect box you've been looking for your whole life. The only problem is once you find it, you're in it."

"I've already done something, and [Bill] reminded me of that. And now, this-- I really just want to do what I love to do... and I want to go where he's gone. Y'know? I want to be able to explore this [comedy] thing and maybe find some-- That's what I keep thinking: that maybe there's something else out there! I just feel like I can go somewhere with it. I don't know where."

"I think it's a dangerous thing for comedians to mature or-- too much. And my wife will tell you I'm doing a fantastic job of not maturing too much."

"The idea of [Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee], honestly, was to try and create something that fit a whole new medium. I really was thinking "What would be a good TV show for a phone?" That was really where I started. And I thought "This would be fun for a phone, 'cause you don't have to follow a story.""

"It's not enough that we catch [lobsters], kill them, and eat them. We want to see them in the tank as we walk into the restaurant, sweating it out. [...] I saw one once that looked like he was attempting to clean the inside of the tank. "I just work here.""

"If we really stuck with the classic Greek priorities, a sound mind in a sound body, the only two places we'd ever go is to a library or a gym."

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

"I pretty much engage with funny people, or weird people, or, y'know, kind of "off" people. Anybody who's a little normal -- even just take, let's say, a normal actor or actress -- I'm lost. I got nothin'. I'm not curious; I'm not interested. You got a show? I don't care."

"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."

"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."

"Being funny has not that much to do with what a great comedy act is about. A great comedy act is a machine that's built. Being funny is the fuel, but you gotta have a whole machine to burn it, and that's the act."

"That's what annoys me about sweepstakes companies, they always tease you with that, "You may have already won," and we all buy into it. [...] I'd like once for a sweepstakes company to have some guts, come out with the truth, just be honest with people one time. Send out envelopes, "You have definitely lost." You turn it over, giant printing, "Not even close!""

"Neat and clean. That's the way I want to live. My idea of the perfect living room would be the bridge on the Starship Enterprise: big chair, nice TV, remote control. That's why Star Trek really was the ultimate male fantasy. Hurtling through space in your living room, watching TV."

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

"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."

"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."

"When you want to enjoy something, you must never let logic get too much in the way."

"Don't you hate "To Be Continued"s on TV? [...] I mean the whole reason you watch a TV show is because it ends. If I wanted a long, boring story with no point to it, I've got my life."

"[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."

"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!"

"Monkeys have contributed a lot to society in their way. They were the first astronauts in the Sixties. Which I'm sure made perfect sense in the monkey brain. "I see, so instead of the little bellhop uniform, you want me to get into a rocket and orbit the earth at supersonic speed. Yeah, I think that is the next logical step for me.""

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

"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."

"For some reason, this is the big question that a regular person will ask you after a show: "How do you remember [all that]?" I don't know why they ask that. You don't have anything else to remember!"

"Maybe comets killed the dinosaurs, maybe they tripped and fell. What's the difference? We'll never know. We couldn't solve the Kennedy Assassination, we had films of that. Good luck with the Stegosaurus."

"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!"

"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."

"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."

"Flying doesn't make me nervous. Driving to the airport can make me nervous. Because if you miss that plane, there's no alternative. [...] No airline goes, "Well, you missed the flight. We do have a cannon leaving in about ten minutes. Would you be interested in that? It's not a direct cannon, you have to change cannons after you land.""

"Frankly, I don't think people think of their office as a workplace anyway. I think they think of it as a stationery store with Danish. You want to get your pastry, your envelopes, your supplies, your toilet paper, six cups of coffee, and you go home."

"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."

"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."