Baron Vaughn Quotes

Surprisingly I've never really stolen anything. One time when I was really young, I was walking down the street, found a GI Joe in the mud, and took it home and I was like, "I got a GI Joe!" And then my great grandmother was like, "You stole that." I said, "What are you talking about?" and she said, "That's not yours." I'm like, "But I found it!" She's like, "But it's not yours, and therefore you stole it." So I just went and put it right back in the mud where I found it.

Sometimes you're not getting the laughs you want or at the place you want but that doesn't mean it's not funny. It means you haven't explored it enough.

Basically I made her [ Sara Pocock] listen to funk music for a good month, a nonstop stream of George Clinton. I was talking about the art from...if you look at the art from George Clinton albums there are two or three artists he worked with...I made her listen to my album too so all the images are from jokes I made. I wanted it to look like the thoughts that are coming out of my brain which is what comedy is anyway.

Anyone who buys a ticket can just go in there, and I don't like everyone, so I always see concerts as like, I'm going to get punched, I'm going to get elbowed, I'm going to get stepped on, get spilled on, someone's going to hit me with their body odor or something.

[Harold Pinter] is a British playwright and is one of my favorite writers. Harold was very obsessed with when memory becomes mythology, that at some point you change your memory to fit who you believe you are.

Netflix is very protective with their information .

Every laugh is not equal. They come from different places. That's sort of the challenge I go towards, making sure the laughs are for the reasons I want. It becomes a back and forth dance with the audience.

Lily Tomlin...I used to watch reruns of Laugh-In and she was always my favorite part. She's this very unique talent and the way she does things has been a very big influence on me.

I like being around people who are good conversationalists. When there's a give and take, and you are heightening an idea, exploring it together, that is my favorite thing in the world. I love a small dinner party - let's say six people, max, where everybody's having the same conversation. That's my favorite thing in the world.

I'll get laughs in the places I don't want them and that makes me realize the direction I want to go in. I don't mean to get too deep into comedy here.

You can fit two United States and maybe a third one into the entire continent of Africa, but on a map we make the entire continent of Africa look like the size of the United States, which is why a lot of people don't know that Africa is a continent. They think it's a country because it looks as big as we do.

I'm working with a lot of legends who are brilliant who are people I've looked up to from a very young age.

You're the hero of your own story. So it's interesting for historical revisionism to happen. I had let go of my own story from my own childhood and whatever anger I had and I began to see it from a very different place. It's really easy to be like "This thing happened to me! Look what they did to me or are doing to me." These are such powerful ideas and it's so easy to hold onto them forever.

There are a bunch of different movies I feel that way about. However, there is a debate because as you may know after MST3K ended there have been things like Cinematic Titanic that are the children and the grandchildren of this way of dissecting movies and making fun of them and in a way celebrating the absurdity of those movies as well. There are certain movies that sort of fit into the MST3K paradigm which is hidden gems, these weird horror/sci-fi/fantasy movies.

I am a big fan of Neil DeGrasse Tyson. He's the voice of science and scientific thinking in the United States and the world. He's the most visible proponent of scientific thinking, and he's very unflinching about it. He knows that it's correct and vouches for it in a very intelligent and very firm way, which I really appreciate.

I think Batman Returns is right for riffs. I love it but it's the ultimate Tim Burton movie. There is so much that happens that's crazy and there are a ton of things to riff.

Being around Lily Tomlin has been great, how she treats people, how she handles herself, how she goes about interpreting her character or deciding how the comedy should work.

Last season when I was on set...for some reason I had The Battle Hymn of the Republic in my head but I didn't know all the words. It was one of those songs you had to learn when you were younger. It wasn't as important for people raised in the 80's and 90's as it was to people raised in the 50's, 60's and 70's so when I started singing "My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord," Jane [Fonda] heard me singing it and started singing the rest of it. Suddenly everyone on set everyone was singing. That's just something I can keep in my heart forever.

I was processing a lot of different things and kind of looking over a lot of things and rethinking my childhood.

I read recently that I was born in Arizona. I wasn't born in Arizona. I was born in New Mexico, but I can understand why people might confuse those two Southwestern desert states.

The thing is that where I want to go isn't necessarily tied to what's going on there politically, but I think Vietnam is a really beautiful country. I think Thailand is also really beautiful.

Shrimp are the insects of the ocean. They're bottom feeders. So they're delicious, but they're the bugs of the sea.

The audience is not your boss. They are your collaborators and when you collaborate with someone you don't have to listen to everything they think or say.

Sometimes I have young comics that ask me, "What should I do when I meet an agent or a manager and they ask me stuff?" And I say, "Well, they always usually ask, 'Where do you see yourself in five years, 10 years, 15 years?' And it's good to have an answer for that."

You're the hero of your own story. I had let go of my own story from my own childhood and whatever anger I had and I began to see it from a very different place. It's really easy to be like "This thing happened to me! Look what they did to me or are doing to me." These are such powerful ideas and it's so easy to hold onto them forever. When I let go of those ideas it was easier to see my childhood from different points of view.

One time I was really close to Steve Martin. I was too afraid to actually go talk to him, but I'll count that as meeting.

I am afraid of abandonment, and, if you will, in a really existential way, being exposed as a fraud. Everyone's afraid of it, and I definitely am. This is a fear that motivates. Oh, and heights. And getting stabbed.

I remember reading in a comedy book very long ago when I first started, a person said there's a difference between a sense of humor and a sense of funny. A sense of humor is knowing what makes you laugh and a sense of funny is knowing what makes other people laugh. The journey of comedy, in a sense, is negotiating those two worlds.

When it was announced that Michael Keaton was going to be Batman, everyone was mad. When they announced that Val Kilmer was going to be Batman, everyone was mad. When it was announced that George Clooney was going to be Batman, everyone was mad. When it was announced that Christian Bale was going to be Batman, everyone was mad. And everyone was mad about Ben Affleck. So every single incarnation, people are going to be mad; you just can't do anything about it.

The album [Blaxistential crisis] artwork is by a friend of mine who is a brilliant artist named Sara Pocock. We've been friends for a couple of years and she worked with me on the animation. I believe she's still working over at BuzzFeed.

The alphabet was invented in Iraq, so it's a cool place.

First of all I love Empire Records and That Thing You Do and all the movies he did from that era. He hates when I bring that up.

I can't do Christopher Walken impressions anymore, thanks [Barack] Obama.

When you do comedy, the audience is not your boss. They are your collaborators and when you collaborate with someone you don't have to listen to everything they think or say. Sometimes you're not getting the laughs you want or at the place you want but that doesn't mean it's not funny. It means you haven't explored it enough. I'll get laughs in the places I don't want them and that makes me realize the direction I want to go in.

There's a difference between a sense of humor and a sense of funny. A sense of humor is knowing what makes you laugh and a sense of funny is knowing what makes other people laugh. The journey of comedy, in a sense, is negotiating those two worlds.

When you're a young comedian the first thing you want to do is get a laugh.

The audience is your first collaborator with the material. If that makes sense.

As you go on you realize "Okay I know how to get laughs but am I saying things I want to say? Am I writing jokes that I like?" You get to a point that is that so you move on.

The Middle East is gorgeous, but again, politically, I would not want to go there.

I just got diagnosed with tendonitis which is such an insulting diagnosis. Just point to my shoulder and say "old."

If you're driving down the street, you keep the neck forward. So that way you can clear out the lanes.