Patton Oswalt Quotes

I look pretty nondescript. I don't go out of my way to... I don't express my personality with my clothes, with my car or my, you know, house. I express with my personality; so as far as what I wear - I don't really care about that.

Everything we have today that's cool comes from someone wanting more of something they loved in the past. Action figures, videogames, superhero movies, iPods: All are continuations of a love that wanted more.

I like confounding expectations. I can expand what it is I am able to do, and hopefully get to do more weird, interesting projects like this. 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. And how the audience perceives that... It's out of my hands. And I don't get that frustrated by it, because I'm on to the next thing at that point.

If you actually do cold readings, it's very close to how people actually talk, because you're experiencing these thoughts anew every moment, and trying to make them come out coherently.

I remember, when 9/11 went down, my reaction was, 'Well, I've had it with humanity.' But I was wrong.

We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We'd have eaten ourselves alive long ago.

I think most comedians go through that (period), where you have to change or evolve. You don't want to just keep doing variations on the same themes. And, besides, it would look kinda creepy for a guy my age to be doing stuff that, like, a 20-year-old would do. 'Yeah, this is bullshit!' It's, like, 'Really? You don't have bigger concerns at this point in your life?'

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 grew up in such a featureless, personality-less suburb. There was nothing to push against.

I have a very tiny house in Burbank. I drive an 8-year-old car. I'm gonna drive it into the ground. I enjoy what I enjoy.

I can't say that I ever abided nerd stereotypes: I was never alone or felt outcast.

As you get older, as a comedian, and keep doing it, what you actually start to cherish on stage is not the build-up to the jokes, but how comfortable you can be in the silence and the non-laughing parts, and how long you can take the audience without a laugh to then get a huge reaction.

You can be an amateur and have a passion for something, but it takes a long time to actually become a professional, meaning that you can handle any situation.

I'm glad that that era of stand-up is over, because I think it adversely affected a lot of people who could have been really, really great comedians. Because they unconsciously or subconsciously stifled their wild impulses, and were thinking about the five clean minutes for The Tonight Show, or the 20-minute sitcom pitch as a stand-up act.

Now we live in this DVD, iTunes, Hulu age, and show creators and networks are realizing that and letting shows develop on those terms rather than 'We gotta just punch it week to week, man.' Now they're like, 'What will happen if someone watches the entire show?'

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.

George Bush is not stupid. He's evil. OK? There's a huge difference between stupid and evil.

With acting, you see some of the kids are literally just off the street, untrained, and they are great. And others are off the street, untrained, and kind of horrible.

There'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.

Before doing my first open mic, I was sitting in the back watching all these comedians banter back and forth and fire jokes and up each other, and I thought, This is where I wanna be.

90% of every art form is garbage - dance and stand-up, painting and music. Focus on the 10% that's good, suck it up, and drive on.

Knock on wood, my groupies tend to be very artistic, creative people - sometimes way more creative than I am.

To get asked to do stuff like 'United States Of Tara' and 'Caprica' is terrific. I can't complain.

If you hit a midget on the head with a stick, he turns into 40 gold coins.

But for the most part, for the majority of a stand-up audience, you better have new stuff they've not heard. And if you put an album out, just consider that material gone. At least that's how I see it.

I never said that movies were struggling behind TV. I'm just saying that movies have a better creative cache.

Doing 'Young Adult' was really reassuring to me in a lot of ways. It confirmed a lot of suspicions I had about great actors.

In my mind, I was always a comedian who was going to branch into writing.

You know, in Los Angeles, you're constantly in your car, you're sealed up, you're not walking around. Whereas in New York, after a while, all your stuff is kind of public, in one way or the other. I'm not saying either one of those is bad; they're both great for a very specific kind of comedian. And I'm glad that they both exist.