Marc Maron Quotes

I'm not fundamentally a writer. I know writers, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for them. It bothers me that no matter how well I do it, it's not really my format.

It always astounds me that over the course of my career, and having lived in four comedy cities - New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Los Angeles - there's very few people I haven't run into.

I seem to offend everybody. I just never got into the universe. I don't seem to have a tremendous amount of discipline or patience with having to follow a story that is really multi-leveled and science-fiction.

Is it hard to make a living in show business? Yeah.

People who have babies tell me I will know a love that is beyond anything I can imagine, and a joy that is indescribable. Love and joy? That sounds horrifying. I have no way of knowing whether I can handle either of those. I'm much better with need and fear. They are what ground me.

I'm just saying, 'Hey, throw me a bone. How about a smile, cute t-shirt? Look at me.' Nothing - unless it's a turn to their friends to go, 'Hey, why is that weird guy looking at us?'

You get all excited to give her the ring, and it's real emotional, and you give it to her, and she cries. And a second later, you're like, 'Damn, I could have had a car.'

It's easy to maintain your integrity when no one is offering to buy it out.

That’s the big challenge of life—to chisel disappointment into wisdom so people respect you and you don’t annoy your friends with your whining.

The medium of podcasting and the personal nature of it, the relationship you build with your listeners and the relationship they have with you - they could be just sitting there, chuckling and listening... there's nothing like that.

I look at every book as a self-help book.

I'm not against people just being funny or telling stories. I don't need to delve into the soft, dark core all the time. If it happens, it happens.

Let's be honest, this is a consumer based economy in America. That's all we manufacture here is need and appetite. We are the world's mouth. They make things in other countries, and they're like, 'Send it to America; they'll eat it.'

The way I figure it, if you can't tell I'm high by looking at me, I win.

God doesn't seem to talk to people like he used to. Who's he talking to now? I don't know. Then I'm walking down the street in Manhattan one day, and I realize maybe it's those guys you see walking down the street talking to themselves. You know, those guys that are like, 'I can't! No, I can't!' Maybe the other side of that conversation is God going, 'You're the new leader.' 'No I can't!' They're not crazy - they're reluctant prophets.

All I can do in the context of pursuing any sort of TV thing, and all I've done in the past, is offer your life at any given point in time to whatever situation you're in.

I was married once before, and I stopped.

Surveillance induced morality: relics of cultural retardation.

Left wing, right wing, I am wingless and tired of trying to fly. Here comes the ground.

As I became very conscious and more aware of things I got very into the beatniks and that kind of stuff. They were very important to me for a few years.

The truth is, I can’t read anything with any distance. Every book is a self-help book to me. Just having them makes me feel better.

I know that the podcast is typically something I can do forever, because it's mine; it's just me and my producer and business partner, so it's our business.

I didn't know that people compared Bill Hicks and I but certainly I'm flattered if they do. I knew Bill a bit. We had dinner a couple of times and played guitar together once. I really tried to keep my distance from him professionally.

Well, evolution's just a theory.' And, I'm thinking to myself, 'Well, thank goodness gravity's a law.'

Maybe depression is the most reasonable response to all the crap around us. Maybe it's the happy people who need medication.

I think most other comics are like, 'I'm going to do my fkin' act and that'll be that.' With me, it's like, 'What if I forget my jokes? What if I can't pull it together? This is going to be a fking disaster!'

As a performer you are being used to keep people watching so the commercial endorsements that support the network can be seen by as many people as possible.

I was also a big Woody Allen fan. When I got into college I listened to Lenny Bruce but it's taken me years to put him into context historically and really get what he did.

Some of you may be perfectly happy with mediocrity. Some of you will get nothing but heartbreak. Some of you will be heralded as geniuses and become huge. Of course, all of you think that one describes you...hence the delusion necessary to push on.

One thing I'm grateful for, and also surprised and excited about, is that I have a place in the community of comics now. In a real way. And I honor that. A lot of what I do is in support of the community and bringing new talent - talking to people that people don't know. And defining us as a community.

I just wanted to be a good comic and had no sense of show business, but at some point you want the opportunity to write a show about your life.

I remember seeing Richard Pryor's first movie; it was a midnight movie when I was in high school. I must have been about fifteen. It was one of the most cathartic experiences of my life. I'd never laughed that much.

I live in Los Angeles, I know it exists. I know you're not supposed to taste air.

You can't avoid pain in life. It's how you handle pain, that's what defines you.

There was a period when I was getting a lot of banana bread, because I mentioned someone cooked me banana bread, and then everyone cooked me baked stuff, and I would take it to the hotel, and it was making me fat.

There's this whole post-modern, nuevo beatnik, retro-bohemian thing going on, you know what I mean? You walk into some coffee shops, and it feels like you're an ex-patriot in Paris in the 20s. You're like, 'Hey, isn't that a young Ernest Hemingway over there? Yeah, I think it is! Hey, let's go have a look and see what he's writing... It's a Gap application.'

I'm not completely sure we aren't all living in a hallucination now.

In the sixties and seventies you could probably name all the great comics. It was still special.

When you actually meet the devil and he offers you a deal most artists eventually negotiate.

Faith in the face of disappointment is only enhanced by laughter in the face of pain.

My monologues aren't always funny. They're generally thoughtful. Sometimes at different levels of aggravation. And sometimes no aggravation. But the pressure on me is not to be joke-efficient when I'm talking on this mic. And that sets the tone.

I've had this look for about a year. I usually grow this beard out around Christmas. I like to go to malls dressed as Jesus, and I like to then walk around the mall and go, 'No! No! This wasn't what it was supposed to be about, people!' Then if there's a Santa at the mall, I walk up to him and say, 'Listen, fat man, you're just a clown at my birthday party.'

Buying my wife a gun sort of like me saying, ' You know, I kinda want to kill myself, but I want it to be a surprise'.

Jerusalem Syndrome is actually a rare psychological condition that occurs to some visitors to the Middle East. They get to Israel and just snap.

When I was a young kid I loved Don Rickles, Buddy Hackett and Jackie Vernon.

I’m glad to be part of the war on sadness. I’m a part time employee of the illusion that keeps people stupid.

For 15 years of my life I smoked, I drank, I used to do drugs... but during that time, I never once thought I was going to die. But the second I set foot on a stairmaster -the second- I am sure my heart is gonna explode and blood is gonna spray out of my nose.

I'm sad to see the passing of the great drug warriors. I certainly did my part in that battle and I don't regret any of it.