I can feel how an audience is reacting when I'm on a stage, but when you are on stage, your perception is distorted. That's something you just have to know. It's like pilots that fly at high Gs and they lose, sometimes, consciousness and hand/eye coordination and they just have to know that that's going to happen. They have to be trained to not try to do too much while they are doing that. So when you are on stage, you have to be aware that you are wrong about how it feels a lot of times.

I don't have a gun, but if I did, I would shoot a baby deer in the mouth and feel nothing.

In 27 years doing this, I've seen a handful of truly great, masterful standup sets. One was Tig Notaro last night at Largo.

I had five dollars in the bank that I couldn't have for three days until they charged me another 15. Leaving me with -10. What does that mean? I don't even have no money any more. I wish I had nothing. But I don't have it. I don't have that much. I have not ten. Negative ten. I can't afford to buy something that doesn't cost anything. I can only afford to get something that costs you give me ten dollars.

Some people think it's demeaning to victims if you ever say anything out-loud about sexual abuse of children. I don't know if that's true.

Out of the people that ever were, almost all of them are dead. There are way more dead people, and you're all gonna die and then you're gonna be dead for way longer than you're alive. Like that's mostly what you're ever gonna be. You're just dead people that didn't die yet.

When you write from your gut and let the stuff stay flawed and don't let anybody tell you to make it better, it can end up looking like nothing else.