Sometimes the truth hurts. It hurts because they have a weakness - and I exploit weakness.
It's so hard to figure out how to end a TV show.
I came into the 'Comedy Bang! Bang!' TV show with a level of confidence that I don't think I would've had if I hadn't been doing the podcast for three years already. I certainly had to figure out in those three years the sense of humor I wanted to do and the way to talk to celebrities without being incredibly intimidated by them.
Intimacy is really good. But then again, the first disk on the record is not intimate in the least. It's a really good CD.
I probably could be a world-class screenwriter by now if I had spent the kind of work I devote on Comedy Death-Ray to that. But I do okay, in that regard. I mean, my stuff gets bought, so it's all right.
The key to being a singer - try to do it audibly.
I think comedians should focus on what makes them happy, what art form fulfills them the most. Don't be calculated about it and say, 'Okay, I'm gonna tweet, and I'm gonna podcast, and I'm gonna do standup, and one of those things is going to lead me to my own TV show. ' I don't think that should be the goal.
The great thing about baseball is that there's a crisis every day.
The desire to be liked is acceptable in real life but very problematic in fiction. Pleasantness is the enemy of good fiction. I try to write on the premise that no one is going to read my work. Because there's this terrible impulse to grovel before the reader, to make them like you, to write with the reader in mind in that way. It prevents you doing work that is ugly or upsetting or difficult. The temptation is to not be true to what you want to write and to be considerate or amusing instead. I'm always trying to fight against the impulse to make my readers like me.
Patients are patients because they are out of rapport with their own unconscious. . . Patients are people who have had too much programming - so much outside programming that they have lost touch with their inner selves.
Every generation has the right to build its own world out of the materials of the past, cemented by the hopes of the future.