Top 205 Quotes & Sayings by Anthony Jeselnik - Page 3

I was always cutting words. I even would write my jokes in my notebook. I still do this, almost like a poem.

I want people to just be paying attention even if they're not necessarily laughing at something, or if it takes them a while to get something, I don't mind that. If half the crowd gets the joke and the other half is sitting there scratching their heads, that's just as good for me if I like the joke, because I feel like it just brings people in more.

I try to write three jokes every morning, although I don't know what they are. I write them as fast as I can, then I put them away for a month. So I couldn't even tell you what they are, or if they're good. I just assume they weren't.

I never go see live comedy shows because I just sit in the audience thinking, "Here's what I would say. Here's what I would do if I got up there." It drives me crazy.

Mike Tyson, what can I say about you that hasn’t already been the title of a Richard Pryor album?

I don't get back as much as I'd like to, so I don't have a lot of close ties [Pittsburgh], but I'll bleed black and gold until I die.

I think my friend Jeff is gay. I don't know - I'm so bad with names.

I didn't care about the backlash. I think the reason it was so severe was because they didn't know anything about me in New Zealand. If I had made jokes about a shark attack in the US, no one would have cared.

The one thing I've found you really can't joke about - and people think it's death or something - is money. No one thinks it's funny, whether you have it or you don't. Money is just something no one seems to like joking about.

My mom's been having a hard time lately. She just found out that she has to have both of her breasts removed - if she's ever going to be good at golf.

Everyone has the same kind of fears; everyone has the same big problems in the world, which is, like, fear of death and I hope horrible things dont happen to my family, but they do. And I think people laugh at them as this great release.

It's always difficult when someone close to you passes away. But it's really tough when they're on top of you.

I was raised Catholic. I rejected it later on. I'm an outspoken atheist now. People say, 'Oh, it's a negative thing to be an atheist.' I don't agree. I think it's more optimistic to think that there is no God, no afterlife.

I can drink like a fish, or at least, someone born with fetal alcohol syndrome.

I spent all night feeding the homeless to dogs.

I love anyone who surprises me and makes me laugh.

I do dark [humor]. I like people who are silly and weird and people who are surprising and good at what they do.

My ultimate goal is to do whatever I want, whenever I want to do it. And that keeps changing. I didn't want to host my own show until I wrote for someone else's.

If I tell a joke on stage and the crowd laughs for a minute, I stand there for a minute and enjoy them laughing before I go on to the next joke. On TV, if I stand there for a minute while they laugh, I look like an idiot who can't remember the next joke.

It's impossible for me to hear the words quadruple murder suicide without thinking of my grandparents.

I'm interested in doing some acting in the future, but it's a distant second to stand up.

My favorite part of going to a wedding is ruining the wedding.

I think some people just don't know that much about comedy. It would be like a person who didn't know anything about football thinking all offensive linemen are the same.

I actually never acted on "Deadwood." I have meetings all the time where people look at my IMDb page and see that I played the part of "Accounting Clerk" on Deadwood. Actually, I was the accounting clerk for production of "Deadwood."

Wayne Brady, I don’t understand why people keep joking that you’re not black. Wayne Brady, you are BLACK. After all, I only remember you for all the years you played an uppity slave on ‘Who’s Line is it Anyway?’.

My first time on stage was the class "graduation" at the Comedy Store. It was awesome. Everything got huge laughs and I just thought I knew how to do comedy.

My favorite sport is football. I'm a die hard Steelers fan. Favorite players were Hines Ward and Greg Lloyd.

I'm too cynical to be an optimist.

Larry King is so old, he's actually one of the Jews that killed Christ.

I had written for Jimmy Kimmel and Sarah Silverman in the past. Jimmy had a different voice, and different priorities. He couldnt be the bad guy in the joke; he couldnt upset people, really.

I guess I prefer the laughs. I couldn't do a whole set of just shocks, but I like throwing a fastball inside every now and then to keep people on their toes.

With comics, you always talk about a big break, but there are a lot of big breaks in your life and not one of them makes a big difference.

I had a happy childhood in a nice suburban area, pretty idyllic, upper middle class and very, very white. My dad is an attorney. My mother is a housewife. They had five kids in seven years: me, my brother, and three sisters. I'm the oldest. We were all very active. My mother was exhausted.

Sure, my uncle killed himself playing Russian Roulette. But I choose to remember him as a great Russian Roulette player.

You can't expect everyone to laugh or applaud you for doing edgy things. Sometimes you'll miss. But I think comedians are artists and there's a value in failure. It kind of works both ways between comedians and audiences. The audience has to understand that comedians are going to sometimes tell a joke that doesn't work out with dark subjects, and the comedian has to understand that sometimes they 'll fail and it's not the audience's fault for not getting it or loving it.

I like the idea of being the funny guy in the dramatic thing, playing a hit man with a weird sense of humor.

Hitler really wasn't so bad. In the black way.

I don't want to wake up with cops surrounding my bed tonight.

An offended audience member repeating a comedian's act from memory is worse than, literally, anything.

Watching soccer just makes me wish I was watching Foosball.

Tom Cruise's pre-nup lets him keep his money, the kids and Katie Holmes.

I think the reason I became funny was because if I made people laugh, they would let me keep talking.

One of my favorite things on the show was just getting to do my own monologue and talking about someone who killed themselves, or making a joke about some horrible tragedy - I love being able to fight for and get on TV. I just think it's so different.

I'm very arrogant and mean. I'm almost like a bad guy professional wrestler.

I don't have much racial stuff in my act. And no one's ever really threatened me to my face. Threats on the internet don't bother me so much.

Im not the voice of reason; Im more the guy using these offensive topics as fodder to raise tension in a joke.

I don't think Metallica sits around all day wondering why country music fans don't embrace them.

The driving force behind doing everything that I've been doing as a stand-up is having problems with authority and not liking to be told what to do.

I think brilliant stuff comes out of working with limitations. One liners are very limiting, but that's what drew me to them in the first place.

Of all the ways people save time, I think racism is the worst.

It seemed fun to play a villain on stage and I wanted my jokes to be so good that I could just calmly tell them on stage.

When I die, I want to be cremated with everybody.

Disasters are funny to me. As a comedian you learn from failure, so I'm always trying to put myself in a situation that does not seem ideal for my comedy and see how it works.

I wish my family had taken more pictures when I was growing up. Instead of always having to draw everything.

What do they call that hat Jewish guys always wear? A Yankees cap.

About a year after I moved to Los Angeles, I decided I wanted to be a joke writer for a late night talk show. So I met with a late night joke writer and he told me that I should start by doing stand-up comedy, because that would really hone my sense of humor and joke writing ability. Eventually I took a stand-up class and a few months later I had a seven-minute act.

I love Austin, but last time I was in town for twelve hours. I was exhausted, drunk and miserable. But none of that was Austin's fault.

Charlie Sheen called his boss on 'Two and a Half Men' a 'Jew ki**' and expected to go back to work. That’s crazy. If you could do that and keep your job, then everybody would do it.

The world is full of horrible things.

My perfect night would be going out to an awesome restaurant, then heading over to the Comedy Cellar to hang out with other comics, drinking beers and making fun of each other.