Russell Howard Quotes

I'm always fighting with profanity and Christian comedy. I'm telling you, it's always a fight. Because my father said to me, he said, 'Well, Kym, I feel like comics and people that use profanity, you have a lack of vocabulary, actually, a whole lot.'

When people tell me to do a clean show, I'm like, 'Guys, I don't even understand your thoughts anymore.' What, you can't say a curse word? Nobody thinks that way!

When I rapped for 'Manto', I used cuss words and no one objected because it was an adult movie. I feel cuss words are also a way of expression.

Art is where we make a stand. If we don't make it there, freedom of expression is lost for everyone - for artists, for journalists, and for everyday people.

I'd heard that Lenny Bruce used a lot of profanity and obscenities in his act, and I was curious.

The jokes were perfect! Then George Carlin started talking about the seven dirty words you can't say on television, then it evolved into social commentary.

I'd always wanted to do a weekly strip, or a strip that was in installments like that. It's been fun trying to figure out how to make that work. Their standards are so prissy that they won't allow me to use all kinds of language. Not only can you not swear, this morning I was informed I couldn't use the word "schmuck." I couldn't use "crap," "schmuck," or "get laid." Those three were beyond the pale. But you get around that, and it comes out better. I can't quite explain why.

My lyrics aren't offensive. Some people find everything offensive.

Artists themselves are not confined, but their output is.

I'm not for gratuitous nudity, but if there's humor, I don't have a problem.

Censorship is the thing that stops you doing what you want to do, and what writers want to talk about is what they do, not what stops them doing it.

You know I've had work banned.

I mean, they censor your work when they're scared of it.

We were not allowed to say, Screw, but we could say, Hump the hostess, because hump is in Shakespeare.

Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.

The freedom of every artist is essential.

What's great about stand-up is that you can say whatever you want and go around the country, and sometimes the world, and work on it and see how people react. You don't need Standards & Practices or notes from lawyers or producers to tell you what's funny.

I always tell students that writing a poem and publishing it are two quite separate things, and you should write what you have to write, and if you're afraid it's going to upset someone, don't publish it.

I came away from 'Saturday Night Live' feeling very well represented. I felt, and I still feel like, they let me do so much stuff that I wanted to do. Stuff that I almost didn't even know what it was.

I'm using my art to comment on what I see. You don't have to agree with it.

There have been times when I'm writing about things that are personally embarrassing. Like any human being, sometimes I can't help but wonder - 'What are the people I know going to think about this?' So I have to remind myself that all is permissible. Art has to be a free space. Language has to be a free space.

I am not brave enough to not pay my income tax and risk going to jail. But I can say rather freely what I want to say with my art.

My work is my way of expressing myself without being arrested.

I will never be a fan of any kind of political correctness: I think it's instant death to creativity.

I have a more direct avenue to expression as an artist than I ever would as a politician.