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

I was the little guy who knew how to tie a necktie. It came from having absentee parents. They were tremendously loving and caring people who, by circumstance, had to go to work.

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.

I'm terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought.

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 never work just to work. It's some combination of laziness and self-respect.