My dad goes through war novels like I go through boxes of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
Growing up, I was discouraged from telling personal stories. My dad often used the phrase 'Don't tell anyone.' But not about creepy things. I don't want to lead you down the wrong path. It would be about insignificant things. Like, I wouldn't make the soccer team, and my father would say, 'Don't tell anyone.'
Comedy is tragedy plus time, but the time is different for everybody.
Backup dancers are completely respectable. They're the studio musicians of dance.
I feel like people have more in common than the news reports. People getting along doesn't sell very well in the news. I find that to be deeply depressing.
I think the thing I had to be careful about while writing a book was not to say anything that was revealing about other people that they would be uncomfortable with. I didn't want to make people angry - that's a real risk.
I like 'Donnie Darko;' it's a cool take on dreams and sleep.
I'm incapable of feeling any joy.
One of my favorite comedies of all time is 'Terms of Endearment;' that's my pace.
When I was growing up, I didn't know who Jewish people were, what it was to be Jewish.
I was raised Catholic, and then I kind of wandered away somewhere in high-school. I never got confirmed, which is a big deal.
As artists, we'd all love to not be commercial - to not sell out to the full extent that we are able. But you do what you have to do to pay New York rent and continue to do what you feel strongly about.
Random people, celebrities of note come to your shows over the years, and I've had some really strange ones. Like the guy from Kiss. Gene Simmons has literally been in the audience at my shows, like, four times. I don't know if he knows me; he's just a big fan of comedy.
The ability to workshop in stand-up comedy is incomparable to any art form, in my opinion.
Nobody knows the life of the working comic.
When I was starting out, I thought I would go into comedy and there would be a mentor, like the Philip Seymour Hoffman character in 'Almost Famous,' in my life, and there just wasn't. It was really frustrating for me because I desired that so much.
I think because I've been working in front of audiences for so many years, I'm able to take in the input, good or bad, and just say, 'This is the part I agree with that you're saying, and these are the parts I don't agree with.'
