Marc Maron Quotes

I came upon whatever I'm doing organically. I didn't study anything. I don't have any real aspirations other than to connect with somebody, and to have the conversation be genuine. That's the best that can happen. Even if it only happens for 10 minutes in an episode. But I think what people forget is that you don't have to try to get a comedian to be funny. Comedians are innately funny. That the real challenge of talking to them is to get them talking about real things and then see where they need to be funny. And let them do that on their own volition.

Is there any indication we shouldn't be depressed - are you living on the same planet that I am? Do you ever think that depression might be the reasonable human response to the crap we're going through as a species, meant to propel us into the next evolutionary step, or at least into taking some different course of action so we might survive? Do you ever think that maybe it's the happy people that are really screwed up in the head?

I don't make a list of questions. Ever. I think a lot of my interviews are driven by my need to feel connection.

The Internet has usurped the collective unconscious and access to cosmic consciousness has become difficult and almost primitive.

Everyone is a little bitter. We're born bitter. The personality itself is really just a very complex defense mechanism. A reaction to the first time someone said, "No you can't.

There's nothing more horrifying than the possibility or the idea that you will just fade away into obscurity.

I'm not for everyone. I'm barely for me.

We need the children of Indonesia and the Philippines to manufacture our freedom of choice.

I've always been someone who likes to talk to people. When I was a little kid, I sought out freaks and weirdos that wandered the streets by where I worked in high school. I would just bring them in and talk to them.

I think sharing experience makes everything better. When people get talking about how they've overcome something or how they haven't, it's nourishing.

In show business, it takes 10 years to create an overnight success. You've heard that, right? But what you don't hear is that that's the exact same amount of time it takes to create a bitter failure.

I always thought I was funny, but I was very sensitive, and very provocative just to get a rise out of people.

I believe in God... just in case. It's like there's some list somewhere and you don't want to be on it. I don't want to say THERE'S NO GOD! and then die and say, Oh, Hi... Is there some kind of community service I can do?

When I was a young comic in New York and I wasn't getting any work, I was wandering around the Lower East Side with my notebook. I would stop at the guitar place on St. Mark's and talk to that dude for a while, then I'd go to the bookstore and talk to that dude for a little while. I had a guy over at the record store, and I'd talk to him for a while. It kept me connected to life.

He does have that weird mixture of born again Christian and stupid that some people mistake for courage and focus.

I'm interested in the fact that comics are people who are oddly courageous in their desire and their commitment to sacrificing any sense of normalcy in their lives, any sense of security, and most of them are oddly unique individuals. Let's have a broader conversation with people that have spent their last however-many-years thinking about their lives. I mean, they're philosophers. They're poets. They're people who are on the outside looking in at the world through a different set of values.

If you can't afford the good food or if you can't afford health care or if you don't have a job or if your car is dangerous because you can't get it fixed and you DIE, you just lost the game-bzzzzz-thanks for playing extreme capitalism.

Most of my comedy writing happens through improvisation on stage; doing it in the moment.

Art is supposed to punch you in the brain, and it's supposed to stay punched.

I sort of get tired of myself sometimes. When you're busy, your life becomes relatively small. But I don't really get tired of talking to other people.

I feel bad for people who have never been addicted to anything, because they're the real losers. You want to know why? Because they don't know what it's like to really want something - and then get it again and again and again.

I don't really compartmentalize well. I'm in a state of anxiety and panic a lot, but it's for different reasons. It used to be because I had nothing going on, but I work very hard and there doesn't seem to be an end to it.

I think things evolve into jokes. I don't generally write them down as jokes. I talk them out.

I found a great deal of relief and excitement watching comics when I was very young. My grandmother was very into them and so was my grandfather. They had a profound effect on me, so I just found myself watching comedians on the after-school shows: Merv Griffin and that kind of stuff.

Show business is one of the few businesses that the devil will actually agree to own just a portion of your soul because he knows if you have a performer's ego you were probably working for him all along.

My favorite part is being engaged with somebody's story and life, and getting a laugh with people I have a tremendous amount of respect for or not, and being challenged by the immediacy of conversation.

When you commit your life to something and it doesn't work out, it is a tough place to be. Suicide can be the spiritual reprieve of a faithless person. I knew I could always just end it, and there was solace in that.

They used to have a smoking section at most airports. No more. They now have these glass-encased rooms. You're not just a smoker, you're an example to other people. You're an exhibit at a futuristic zoo.

I used to do a lot of drugs. I didn't stop because I didn't enjoy them; I stopped because I couldn't handle the commitment.

Dogs are too much to handle. I don't need anything in my house that's needier than me.

I'm just looking for authentic engagement of some kind, and usually, after an hour or more, you get that. Some people talk at you. Some people just want to answer questions, but a lot of times, all of a sudden you drift away, and you don't remember you're on the mic, and you're in something real.

I think the reason Jesus is so popular, just on a celebrity level, is that he died at the peak of his career.

In most cases the only difference between depression and disappointment is your level of commitment.

For my next trick I will make everyone understand me.

I'm happy, certainly, given the times we're living in, to be doing OK, and to not be worrying about money, and to be producing something I enjoy.

They are not testing comics for drugs. If our job is dependent on that, there would be three working comics in the country, and two of them would have puppets.

If you let someone talk for an hour, you're gonna have a pretty good idea of who they are, and I think that's more rewarding than me sitting there going, "That's complete bullshit about health care."

I once talked about wanting to kill myself, but I don't think I was ever really planning on doing it. It was just comforting to know that I could.

Americans don't understand irony? I am an intelligent person living in the United States. My entire existence is ironic.

It may have lost its special-ness forever and the clubs might not being doing well but I think standup is in the best shape it has been in a long time.

When you're a kid, you always feel you have this weird kindred-spirit thing with other Jews, until you get older and you realize it's just middle-class bourgeois Jews that sort of fit a template that your family fits into one way or another.

I have a very primitive sense that if I just turn on a radio or the television, that somebody's playing that stuff for me.

I'm weird; I have a very strange emotional memory. I really somehow hold on to even passing moments with people.

The next evolutionary step is into the screen.

Comics seemed to have a handle on things. They could sort of disarm and get control over reality. I found it very comforting to laugh.

My cats, the ones that I have, were feral when I found them so the relationship that I have with them 10 years in is very mutual, earned, and evolved over time. It was never an easy thing. I like that they have a certain distance and have their own sense of selves.

I used to be jealous; I'm not jealous anymore. And a miracle happened to me, because if you're jealous, it's a cancer, it's a plague on your spirit, it really is. And I actually cured jealousy in a very weird way - I cured it with mathematics. And I'm not a math person at all, but I've been with my wife for about seven years, so we have had sex probably, I'd like to think, like, 9 million times or, at least, 1,500. So, the way I figured it, if she goes out and screws some other guy once - I'm still winning.

There's something about cats' self-sufficiency and their seemingly individualistic ways that I find compelling.