Lily Tomlin Quotes

No matter how cynical I get, I can't keep up.

The phone company handles 84 billion calls a year-everything from kings, queens, and presidents to the scum of the earth.

Having a real public outlet is how you imprint something for yourself. It's just a matter of timing. It's like you've marked your territory.

I was always empathetic with animals. It's a terrible and self-involved point of view that we do something because someone else is exploitable.

You know being relevant or coming up with something interesting, funny to say about what's current is just as hard as it might ever be depending on the serendipity of it all.

When I am happy I feel like crying, but when I am sad I don’t feel like laughing. I think it is better to be happy; then you get two feelings for the price of one.

My politics are just inclined to be empathetic and humanistic. I grew up with so many different kinds of people with different politics, different religion, no religion, no politics, education, no education, and I was infatuated with all of them.

Being a New Yorker is never having to say you are sorry.

Reality is the leading cause of stress among those in touch with it.

There's so much plastic in this culture that vinyl leopard skin is becoming an endangered synthetic.

I bought a box of animal crackers, but there was nothing inside. They'd eaten each other.

I worry that the person who thought up Muzak may be thinking up something else.

I try to be cynical, but it's so hard to keep up.

Reality is nothing more than a collective hunch.

We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company.

Creating characters is just another way to express a type and put that type to use.

If you read a lot of books you are considered well read. But if you watch a lot of TV, you're not considered well viewed.

I'm not a religious person. I don't have any desire. To me it's imitative of a conventional culture. I'm all for it for anybody. I totally have a free and open feeling about how other humans want to live their lives. It's just not something that has any real significance for me.

What I appreciate is acknowledging to the audience that I think they have brains.

I still believe that sex is dirty. It's just that now I wouldn't have it any other way.

We are all in this together, by ourselves.

People hire me to create some kind of archetype or some culture type, or something. I guess they accept whatever I come up with.

Well, if I can be of any help at all, you are in worse trouble than I thought.

If truth is beauty, how come no one has their hair done in the library?

In the depths of the night, fear grips my heart. It paralyzes my mind. But most of all, I feel very, very alone

I worry about kids today - because of the sexual revolution, they're going to grow up and never know what "dirty" means.

I can handle reality in small doses, but as a lifestyle, it's much too confining.

The formula for water is H2O. Is the formula for an ice cube H2O squared?

Every day I read the newspapers, and no matter how cynical I get, it's imposssible to keep up.

To act out something or take chances in the performance is one thing. But in terms of a camera, whatever's captured is captured so that's a little more daunting. You know you can't go back next week and fix it. Whereas in a live audience you know it's so in the moment and you just go with what's happening. First of all you never have to see it again so you don't know if you were really fulfilling it or not.

The start to a better world is the belief that it is possible.

The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.

I think life is perverse. It can be beautiful, but it won't.

There will be sex after death, we just won't be able to feel it.

Did you know, in the entire universe, we are the only intelligent life forms thought to have a Miss Universe contest?

To me, "sexual freedom" means freedom from having to have sex.

Thank God kids never mean well

Did you know, throughout the cosmos they found intelligent life forms that play to play? We are the only ones that play to win. Explains why we have more than our share of losers.

Ninety eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hardworking, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them.

Growing up in Michigan was fine...until I realized where I was.

Instead of working for the survival of the fittest, we should be working for the survival of the wittiest - then we can all die laughing.

I mean yes to act out something or take chances in the performance is one thing. But in terms of a camera, whatever's captured is captured so that's a little more daunting.

My space chums think my unique hookup with humanity could be evolution's awkward attempt to jump-start itself up again. They're thinking just maybe, going crazy could be the evolutionary process trying to hurry up mind expansion. Maybe my mind didn't snap. Maybe it was just trying to stretch itself into a new shape. The cerebral cortex trying to grow a thumb of sorts.

I always wondered why somebody doesn't do something about that. Then I realized I was somebody.

If you can't be direct, why be?

For fast-acting relief try slowing down.

I was always drawn to more the social-expression-of-culture types.

I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific.