Nick Kroll Quotes

The stage sharpened my creative instrument and encouraged me to go deeper and try new things.

It wasn't until Duotones that I felt my true voice come out.

The first time I did stand-up I was 17, and I was really a stand-up once I was 19 in New York, and now I'm 41, and I still feel like I haven't found myself onstage. Earlier in my career, I was really tight, really together, and knew who I was and I was confident.

My view of myself as an artist expanded because of the time I spent at Cal Arts.

The only reason I signed on for a speech and drama course was because I thought it would be easy, but as soon as I stepped on the stage, I thought, 'This is exactly where I belong.'

As an artist, you keep learning. You draw out different parts of you.

I do come alive in front of a camera. The first video I ever made was a formative moment for me.

When I was 14 and went on the stage for the first time, it stimulated me so much that I was convinced that I didn't want to do anything else.

The beautiful thing about stand-up advice is that it applies to anybody, any gender, any race, any age. The best thing you can do - everybody will tell you - is get on stage as much as you can. I would add to that: get on stage as much as you can - with the people you admire.

Something I would have never thought that I could have done before is dancing in front of thousands of people. It changed how people view me in a negative and a positive way.

I've been doing comedy for 20 years now. I started when I was 13 and I think for the first 10 years I was impersonating other people.

I discovered that I love being on stage in high school.

I was very young when I did 'I Blame Coco,' and I never really recognized that sound as me.

At 14, I was modeling, which helped me come out of my shell, but I always dreamed of theater school.

It's funny because sometimes one doesn't actually consider these things for one's self until one's in a situation like this press conferece where one has to kind of think about it.

There's times when I'm really shy, so these roles that I get to play, they're how I would love to really be. And that's why I love doing stand-up, because it gives me the freedom to say what I really want to say. I think that's why it's my favorite thing to do.

I think I've been a bit misunderstood; the first record was more timid than I wanted it to be. I don't like getting pinned down by sex or how I sound like because it's not who I am or what I want to be.

I've lost, but I also gained a lot. I'm a creative person, and no one can take that away from me. I've been told I committed professional suicide because it was the only escape from the terrible pressures I was facing. What do you think?

I'm glad that that era of stand-up is over, because I think it adversely affected a lot of people who could have been really, really great comedians. Because they unconsciously or subconsciously stifled their wild impulses, and were thinking about the five clean minutes for The Tonight Show, or the 20-minute sitcom pitch as a stand-up act.

I used to have to downplay my sexuality because I wanted to be taken so seriously as a thespian and as an artist and as an actor, so I'd play crack heads and down trotting women and disguise myself, and I think as I've gotten older, I become more comfortable with who I really am and all parts of me knowing that my physical self doesn't diminish me in any way or my talent.

I think I'm one of those people that needed to be seen by someone else to see myself. But then on the other hand, the way I do my work, I always try to only completely focus on my work, so when I do my work I'm only interested in my character. So I don't have an idea of what it means for my career. So this is why I don't feel like I need to be discovered, because I feel like even without being discovered, I will be fine.

I think the most important thing for me is a challenge. I'm not happy, creatively, unless I'm faced with a challenge. So, overcoming those challenges and really discovering characters that aren't like me helps me grow, as a person and as an artist.

I think perhaps I've learned to be myself. I have a theory that all artists who would be important - painters and writers - must learn to be themselves. It takes a very long time.

I think that at a certain age, say fifteen or sixteen, poetry is like masturbation. But later in life good poets burn their early poetry, and bad poets publish it. Thankfully I gave up rather quickly.

I told [Bill Gates] I believed every word of what I said but that I should never have said it in public. I wish him the best, I really do. I just think he and Microsoft are a bit narrow. He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger.