Lizz Winstead Quotes

I've always considered myself a feminist, I always considered myself somebody who is a reproductive rights activist, and I've spent the past 25 years of my life speaking truth to power. And using humor to do that.

When you go out for drinks, tell people to bring in a news story that made them say "Oh my god." Talk about it.

The political satirist usually votes against their own interests, but the bottom line is that it doesn't really matter.

I just think that also controlling women is a way to control the whole narrative. And so I think when you've oppressed a people for a really long time, you're terrified to give them any power because they may have some reflection of how horrible you've been and you're terrified of being treated that way. All that we want is to be our best selves, but that's hard for them to understand.

And home pregnancy tests? They are so last century. Nowadays, I think there's an app that calls your iPhone to warn you that if you finish that third cosmo, you may wind up with a wombmate.

I'm Catholic. My mother and I were unpacking and she found my diaphragm. I had to tell her it was a bathing cap for my cat.

By some fluke, my folks forgot to ask me the question most crucial to ensuring a lifetime of self-doubt: 'What if you fail?

I think the craziest thing I heard, and this guy's not even nominated, he's from Texas...he said there's no reason that women shouldn't carry a stillborn baby to term, and that it's an excuse to have an abortion if she doesn't want to. She should just let nature take its course from start to finish. Literally forcing birth of a fetus that died in the womb.

In an odd way, my parents were proud of me. When they saw me do stand-up, I'd see them looking around the room and watch them taking in the people laughing. On some level, that comforted them.

What's blinking red on my radar is the fact that for people who prioritize abortion rights, LGBTQ rights, or voting rights, those things are coming out of state legislatures, and some of the laws on reproduction stuff is coming out of city council, and so what's getting at me is the fact that there's just a fundamental lack of understanding that these laws are happening and being created by people who often won by ten votes in a midterm election.

Every era in history has needed, and will need, reproductive health services.

North Carolina is an amazing place. It has the best food, and also has folks fighting really hard for what's right.

One of the first things Catholic school taught me is that babies were born sinners. You sucked before you took your first breath.

We raise awareness and drop information about access and laws into pop culture spaces through making videos and through live events. That's like fifty percent of what we do.

You can't solve a problem until you address the problem.

Nowadays everybody's a feminist - male, female, trans. Gender's so passé they don't even care anymore. They know what equal rights are, they know what it's about, and everybody is standing toe-to-toe strong about it and really fighting.

There are people that say you should never use humor to talk about anything that's important or hard, and since I don't believe that, at some point there has to be a level of "agree to disagree."

This tornado is in Oklahoma so clearly it has been ordered to only target conservatives.

Unless you can point to something that I have done or said that has changed the course of the public opinion in a negative way, you've got to check yourself sometimes and say, "Maybe I don't like the way that this thing is said, but it's expanding tolerance." If I said something that was shutting down something that was positive, call me out, but I don't really see me doing that.

My curiosity is not a choice. It's always been part of me. I think of it as a vital organ.

You don't have to be famous. You just have to find your own coven of bad-asses that you trust and want to empower.

By laughing, it helps take our power back.

Opportunities present themselves to me. That's how my whole life has been pretty much. I've been lucky.

We've got a deeply flawed political system with an insane overreaching extremist element, with a Supreme Court that is completely loony.

There's plenty of ways you can go and encourage people. And you should do that. But don't demonize what you do, I do, what other comics are doing, when you see people showing up and listening and responding because they've heard the messaging in the new kind of way.

I had gone back home to finish my book in 2011, and that's when these laws really started coming into states all across the country. I needed to get back to Brooklyn, so I had my two dogs and I rented a van and I called up Planned Parenthood and I said, "I have to drive back to Brooklyn. I've got two dogs and a van. What if I did some fundraisers for you along the way?" And they were like, "Who are you?" I was like, "No, this is a super good idea."

Really life is about narcissism; no one is ever thinking about you much. You always think people are thinking about you way more than they are.

Good satire hopefully provides thought-provoking conversation.

The second you realize you're not alienated, that makes you empowered.

Truth be told, when you start your career out as a clown, you don't consider yourself a writer.

It is easier to talk about issues; it is easier to say you're a feminist because it's actually awesome to be one. The panopoly of people identifying as feminists is really excellent now that we've come to a point where all these really interesting voices are rising up and saying they're feminists - women of color, trans people, gay folks, everybody. It's an exciting time to actually define as that because it means that people are really feeling like their voice is what's the most important thing in the movement, and I love that.

Nebraska is proof that hell is full and the dead are walking the earth.

If you want to effect change, start small.

I did the Daily Show, and then I did Air America Radio, and I realized that I was lucky enough to have a job where I could get information to people. But those spaces weren't appropriate to then tell people what to do - they were corporate enterprises. My main job was to be funny, so I was trying to figure out, how can I combine all the things I love - comedy, feminism, calling out bullshit - into a creative space that other creative people would want to join in and help out?

The fact is, there's no such thing as "The Age of Abstinence."

For me, it's important to elevate the hypocrisy with humor. Then you really are using the humor to elevate the problem, saying this is why it matters, and then saying we can combine the work together with laughing and being around joyful people and helping out. So the comedy sometimes can actually full-on expose the issue, but also it's a gathering tool. It serves a lot of purposes.

Commit a little bit more to the world outside of your own life. Get people talking.

We live in a nation where corporations are people.

I think that if you see that people are laughing, you know they haven't given up hope. You see that people are laughing because everyone has identified the collective hypocrisy of a law or of a politician who is crafting those laws. It's really nice to know that you can have a range of emotion on an issue. You can feel outrage, you can feel sadness, you can find humor, and all of those things are part of coping and dealing, and really, they give you an inspired way of moving forward as you fight.

To really start talking about a narrative where there's no good abortion or bad abortion; there's only the abortion that you need, I think that message is really resonating and changing the landscape of how we talk about it. We're really moving forward.

Since we are made up of comedians and filmmakers and writers and improvisers, we have the unique opportunity to bring joy to people who are sometimes buried in their own lives or are subjected to the bullshit that clinic workers are subjected to every day.

Having an enemy that is visible out in the daylight is a good thing.

I'm not sure I'm okay with 2 guys gettin' married, but I don't wanna be a jerk about it.

If you are very religious, and your religion teaches you that conception equals a baby, I don't know how I'm ever going to win you over to my side.

It's always fun when somebody who you admire and respect is the voice - is your voice, as a viewer.

I'm a firm believer of wine.

It's really nice to see that, looking at all sides of the abortion issue - from the person who doesn't want to have kids so they're going to have an abortion and that's not traumatic for them, to somebody who loses a wanted pregnancy, to somebody who has complicated feelings because of their religion. We can talk about all of those complicated and individual stories and not feel like there's any one abortion story that's right or wrong.

If you're a woman and you've decided to step in front of people on any kind of platform and say that you have feelings about anything, you are committing a radical act. People view it as such, so you might as well actually commit a radical act.