Patton Oswalt Quotes

It’s the method of consumption, not what’s on the plate.

I'm going to continue to try to strike a balance, because I really, really do love doing stand-up, and I don't see why it should affect the acting. And again, I'm not going, "I've got to become a dramatic actor now." I just want more interesting jobs. I just want to keep doing stuff that's different.

I had a romance novel inside me, but I paid three sailors to beat it out if me with steel pipes.

I like to write, I like to do stand-up, I like to act.

Anything's better than Gen X which is what we got. Thanks Douglas Coupland. We sound like a team of mutant vigalantees with frosted hair and chain wallets. Actually that's not completely horrible.

I've had some pretty good arguments with people, but I've never regretted it. I've had people come up where it's all emotion and no fact. That's always sad.

Yeah, there were a few years in the early nineties where I really began to hate what was valued as funny and just sort of what was valued in stand-up, period.

I'm so beyond genre, drama, comedies, I just want to do really good, interesting projects.

Based on my own experience, when you're going through adolescence you don't know how the world works. You can't set a story in the world you live in because you don't know what a utility bill is, or how to budget your paycheck.

Zombies can't believe the energy we waste on nonfood pursuits.

Wars are usually really popular with people that aren't gonna be affected by them. 'Cause it's just entertainment, and it's just weird, like, "Well, we've got to show the world that we're strong." No we don't. And by the way, that has nothing to do with you. Why are you equating yourself with that&#Array; you know what I mean?

I really had to imagine the kind of person that I would have been if I had never left my hometown... I don't think I would have been a very pleasant person.

There's all kinds of those moments in your life where either through a weird set of circumstances, or a song you hear, or a smell you smell, or one person says something totally out of the context without the meaning that you assigned to it, but you snap back to the way you were when you were 14 or 15. We all deal with that.

All the truly great stand-ups say, "I go onstage, and I work on jokes. The inspiration will happen while I'm doing my work." To me, in the end, the surest thing is work.

What you want to worship above youth, I think, is beauty, and beauty is so beyond just appearances after a while. Because you can be with someone who's good-looking; if they open their mouths and they're an idiot, then they cease to be beautiful very quickly.

The truly great actors, like Charlize Theron, are just like, "I'm an actor. For hire. I show up, I do my job." There's no "I'm just waiting for the inspiration." They just do their jobs. They say, "Let's go over the scene a few times and get it."

If Kevin James or Paul Giamatti drop weight, I'm done. I don't want to be the last pudge out there.

We need conservatives that can accept gays, and then we need hippies that can shave and bathe.

There is a part of my generation that is not on social media because they have happy lives and they're not trying to connect with anybody. And there are other people who are on social media because they need to connect.

Nowadays - and I don't want to make some dopey cultural statement here - everyone can be, just by existing in society, because we all have a ship that we follow. Even if it's other people, like on MySpace pages, we're just as collective of enthusiasts now. That seems to be the world we're in.

Is it bad when you refer to all alcohol as "Pain Go Bye-Bye Juice"?

I update my MySpace every day, I update my Facebook fan page, but that's about the extent of it. I don't want to get into extended conversations with people on MySpace, because there are friends I have extended conversations with every day. I'm on the phone every day. There's like five people I just call and yak with every single day. And that to me is my Internet. You can replace the Internet with five really smart friends.

There's something kind of beautiful about that pure love of things. Like, "I'll show that I love the thing I love by hating everything else."

Here's what I'm afraid of. I know a lot of comedians, friends of mine, who just got into the "Doesn't matter what I say. It doesn't matter. They're just gonna laugh anyway."

As much as I know people love the method and what you can draw out of yourself, a lot of acting is very imaginative.

Meal isn't over when I'm full. Meal's over when I hate myself.

Growing up there are always those kids who are only happy when they are making someone else upset. That is unfortunately just how some people are. Some people are just born with bad wiring.

When you put an album out, you can't do any material from the album if people are paying to see you.

You saw a lot of guys, especially in the early '90s, whose acts were a pitch for a sitcom. A lot of them were very funny, but there's nothing worse than watching comedians or musicians who are up there and are doing something they're not interested in.

Cheap liquor is a magic potion that can turn you into a puppet cowboy before it kills you.

I think right now is the best time for stand-up, ever. I sincerely do.

The idea of, 'The journey is the destination' is put into action by browsing in an indie record store. Besides, a human being is a much better guide than a 'More Like This' link on the internet.

Beyond any role that I ever had, really early on as a stand-up, I would see actors decide to try it and they would bomb miserably. What I realized was that stand-up, acting and writing are all their own disciplines.

If you play comedic scenes like they're really serious, then it's so much more funny than if you're going for a laugh.

So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, 'The good outnumber you, and we always will.'

I know how my body operates differently from what it did when it was 30 and when it was 20. As unhealthy as I am, I'm weirdly aware of exactly how my body functions.

When you act, you're being asked to pretend in a very rigid, controlled environment. It's very un-childlike. So a lot of times, when you put kids in that situation, you hope they have a better support system outside of what they're doing to bring them back to reality at the end of the day and to keep them well-rounded.

I have a lot of friends who were stand-ups, and they just stopped after a while, because they didn't like that battle, or they just couldn't do it. And then they would get on a sitcom and get visible and get back into it, because the audience was just way easier on them. But they lost those crucial years of learning to turn any audience into your audience.

My advice to you is be boring, square, asshole parents... When I have kids, the most recent CD I will own - Phil Collins, No Jacket Required, and I'll rave about it. 'Do you like rock 'n' roll? 'Cause this is rockin' good stuff, kid.'

Every zombie story is fundamentally about a breakdown of order, with the infrastructure intact. That infrastructure might be on fire, yes.

If I were to just focus on stand-up, I could actually, paradoxically enough, be home way more, because I would leave on a Friday, go do a couple theaters Friday, Saturday, maybe Sunday, come home.

I think the kind of person that gravitates toward New York is a person that's not so much focused on controlling exactly how they appear and how they exit. They're more fascinated with the process.

I want to experience as many different tastes, sights, emotions, conflicts, and cultures as possible, so that I can expand the canvas of my memory and enrich my comedy.

Stand-up is something I just truly love to do, so I'll always go back to it. I'll never stop doing it, that's for sure.

I'm grateful that I had that uphill battle for 10 years of going onstage and having nobody know who I was, because you have to win them over.

There's nothing wrong with doing comedies, and I'm not against comedies, either, but I always want to do stuff that keeps me off my guard and gets me out of my comfort zone.

I mean, all alternative comedy is are comedians that have being doing it for so long, for so long, that they were relaxed enough to start becoming personal on stage.

Somebody is going to find a way digitally that is just as innovative. In the end, the tools can change, but there is always someone who can think of something cool to do.