Certainly, you want to be liked, but as you gain confidence and experience you're more concerned with expressing yourself and what matters to you.

A person riding a unicycle on a tightrope doesn't worry about being likeable; they're doing something amazing that very few people can do.

The more you perform, the more adept you get at the nuances of navigating that communal conversation.

Some people say homosexuality is a sin. It’s not. God is perfectly cool with it, God feels the exact same way about homosexuality that God feels about heterosexuality. Now you might say, ‘Whoa, slow down. You move too fast. How could you have the audacity, the temerity, to speak on behalf of God?’ Exactly, that’s an excellent point and I pray that you remember it.

Louis CK went from a writer/comedian to winning Emmys for his own show because he works his ass off.

Your stage persona is usually a version of yourself, to varying degrees. Some folks do a full-on character, so that's different. But most comics do some version of themselves.

After twenty plus years of performing hundreds of shows a year, I prefer to try things out on stage rather than for friends. I don't see the benefit in that, really.