Any acting job that I ever got, I always treated it like I was a neophyte, I didn't know what I was doing and I was going to work just as hard as I do on my stand-up.
Patton OswaltI'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. I have a lot of friends who were stand-ups, and they just stopped after a while, because they didn't like that battle. 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. That's why they're okay stand-ups, but they're never going to be great, because they don't have that presence. They never built those muscles up.
Patton OswaltJust think of yourself as starting from zero every time. That's what I do with every new role. I'm at zero, and I'm going to do the work.
Patton OswaltStand-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.
Patton OswaltThere's no destination. There's no getting anywhere. There's just the going. The key to life is to make the going really fun. Because people that are like, “If I just get to this, then boom!” And then they get there and there's this dawning of an afterwards. Whereas I'm just always in the going. And it's not a frantic going like, “I gotta keep going or I'm gonna go nuts!” I can not do anything for weeks or months if I need to and just sit and read books or watch movies. I'm just as fine consuming and absorbing new art as I am trying to make it. But it's all in the going.
Patton Oswalt