Stand-up is every man for himself; you learn from hanging out at these clubs and watching other guys, and then trying not to be like them.

Comedy is essentially made by young men, or older men with some form of arrested development, for young men or immature older men.

You can perceive life as tragic, or you can laugh at the tragedy of it and that turns it into comedy. It doesn't change the circumstances.

I feel a big obligation to the audience, almost in a moral sense, to say something useful. If I'm going to spend a year of my life on these things, I want something that I feel that strongly about.

I've always thought that comedy was just another dramatic expression. I try to measure the amount of truth in a work rather than just looking at the generic distinction between comedy and drama. There's a lot of bullshit drama that leaves you totally cold. And there's a lot of wasted comedy time too. But when you get something honest, it doesn't matter what label you give it.

My characters aren't losers. They're rebels. They win by their refusal to play by everyone else's rules.

It doesn't take any longer to improvise 10 takes than it takes to shoot 10 takes of the same thing. It turns out to be just as responsible from a business point of view as anything else.