I used to see Jim [Carrey] in comedy clubs and tell him 'This isn't going to get you anywhere. What you're good at is that nice Jimmy Stewart stuff.' Thank God he never listened.
I wasn't the good looking guy, I wasn't the hot chick, I wasn't the fat guy, I didn't have a catchphrase, I didn't wear a silly hat. I was just trying to improve as a comedian.
I worshipped guys like Bill Maher, Jay Leno, and Jerry Seinfeld, and was doing my variation of that. But as a young person with no political point of view or life experience, it was as funny as you can imagine.
Well, I started trying stand-up before I joined Google, actually. And then I went broke because that's what happens when you try stand-up comedy. You're actually paying to perform.
I wanted to take the audience on a journey where that transition was funny and awkward. It's the same cynicism that [Strange] has.
Nobody knows the life of the working comic.
I take the good with the bad. I always wanted to be a comic, and part of that, for me, was that I wanted to be on the road. It's a lonely existence, but it is what it is.
I always felt that my way into comedy would be through my writing rather than my acting.
Comedians are always going to be in the showbiz middle class, you're not Brad Pitt; you're never going to be Sam Rockwell or Shia LaBeouf or Leo DiCaprio. You're a comic.
It was a dangerous profession I had chosen ... because no one likes a funny kid. In fact, adults are scared silly of them and tend to warn children who act out that they are going to wind up in prison or worse. It is only when you grow up that they pay you vast sums of money to make them laugh.
You mostly know that you want to be funny, know that you have the desire. It's not like people who grow up beautiful and can look in the mirror and be like, I'm beautiful! Funny is more of a journey. And a desperate attempt.
All that the comedian has to show for his years of work and aggravation is the echo of forgotten laughter.
