They always give you three ketchup packets. When you go back up and ask for more, the guy handing them out always treats you like you're taking from his personal stash. "Looks like my kids aren't having ketchup tonight."

It's kind of hard to articulate, but, like, this notion of mercy, forgiveness, was very appealing for me. It was very profound. And it had a deep impact, and I think it still does.

No one goes into standup to make money. The frustration and rejection are just too much.

For me, stand-up comedy is a conversation between me and the audience. I have to keep them listening. When I'm making jokes about cake for twenty minutes, I have to make sure my audience is interested and following where I'm going.

People treat having a kid as somehow retiring from success. Quitting. Have you seen a baby? They’re pretty cute. Loving them is pretty easy. Smiling babies should actually be categorized by the pharmaceutical industry as a powerful antidepressant. Being happy is really the definition of success, isn’t it?

For a comedian to kind of catch onto something right as something's catching on in our culture, a lot of it is luck, and you hope the joke is funny.

There's this message to comedians in particular, that you shouldn't write it, and a television writer should write it. And that's a prevailing conventional wisdom that I think is really wrong. That's not to say that television writers aren't great, but I think that the belief that some comedy writer's going to be able to capture your voice is naive.