Top 105 Quotes & Sayings by Jay Mohr - Page 2

When I watch like The Office I'm fascinated because most of America works in an environment where they see the same eight people every day.

George Carlin put it best. He said, "My old act was so easy to do because there was so little of me in it."

I don't have the ability to do a nine-to-five nor do I have the desire to. Stand-up is the only thing that's come completely naturally to me.

I don't have a nine-to-five brain.

There was never a moment in George Carlin's career where he dipped below an A+. When he came out with the "Hippie Dippie Weatherman" on The Tonight Show, I mean, it seems so mundane now, but it was in black and white TV and the whole bit was that this guy smoked tons of grass and was a terrible weather man. "Forecast for tonight? Dark."

We all shared this experience. We all had one brain, we were one giant organism working and having joy. "What about Walken?" Sorry, bro...Maybe I should've done an hour and 34 minutes.

Most importantly, how impressive can I be to people that bought tickets, where they never feel, "It was pretty good." If anyone thinks my show was "pretty good," then I've completely failed. I think every comic should think that.

When you do an hour and a half and you destroy, like tonight was great. I had an awesome time. I realized that I'd been up there for about an hour and a half and I realized, "Wow, I'm gonna get out of here without doing Walken." It is a bit of a moral victory.

I created a human being from paper and I put it on the screen, a unique individual. I wish every performance, every IMDB credit, I would do it over, because I would do it better, because I would do it less. If that makes any sense.

I don't care about anybody's perception of me except for the audience.

What's great about stand-up unlike athletes and other things when you get old you get old and rusty.

I've asked Comedy Central, and they just say, "I don't know." It took Showtime two years to put my special on DVD. Owning your own content is the single most important thing in the world.

As far as in my career, I don't know what other form there is. I would love to do a talk show.

I started to have panic attacks on stage and my wife just asked, "Why don't you just stop?" I was doing Ghost Whisperer at the time so I was making enough money where I could put it away and she said, "Then, when you go back, you just go up and tell the truth." And it's a lot more tiring.

The anxiety is, "Are they going to come?" and when you get there and it's full you say, "I'm good. I can stop freaking out." But when it's four days out and they're scrambling to find more radio shows and Good Morning Phoenix and all these weird shows, then that gets very tiring.

I'm going to eventually shoot my own special, because you have to own your own content. My Turn (2003), that's never been released on DVD.

This is NOT a pretty good business. You cannot be pretty good and be a national headliner. That becomes the allure.

I don't know how you do it [working at office]; I would just get up and walk out. That's what I did for pretty much every job I've ever had.

I'm a comic because I don't want to do the nine-to-five, I have to modify that and say I'm a comic because I have an inability to do a nine-to-five.

Comedians are always going to be in the showbiz middle class, you're not Brad Pitt; you're never going to be Sam Rockwell or Shia LaBeouf or Leo DiCaprio. You're a comic.

It's always a job when you're the reason they're assembling. If you're just doing shows and you're on a lineup with eight other guys, it's fun, it's great.

I'm telling you, I could teach at a university, [George] Carlin, a whole semester. The construction and deconstruction of the words, the language, the order.

I've always been very open about it. I've been very open about my addiction, about my panic disorder. But I think that transparency is what can separate you from others because I think that is where comedy is going.

I think, here's what I've realized from interviewing people, and I've been very open about my Catholicism and my love of Christ and I don't care who knows it but I don't do it on stage. People that disagree with me that are listening to my podcast that are not Christian, I'm not trying to sell them Christianity and I make it very clear.

First of all, my wife writes half my act. I don't know how I could "steal" from my wife.

[George Carlin] was obsessive about time; he was obsessive compulsive about his material and making things shorter and more perfect. He did an HBO hour every other year. It's live; you have to be off-stage at 55 minutes. It's a network; you've got to be off. And it's perfect.

It's very good to know when you're being lapped on the racetrack, 'cause you've got to put your foot down on the pedal and get going.

What I've realized in the last year, 80% of my act has already happened to me, and it's not until you retell the story at a party or to a friend or it comes up on the podcast that you, I don't know why I'm not doing that onstage!

You remember from watching the show, there are no "jokes." That's why if you see people on Twitter accusing me of being a "joke thief," I just tell them to come to one of my shows.

I'm sure that having acted like an asshole for a great deal of my life, then having played assholes for a good part of my life, created a perception that I'm an asshole.

There seems to be a weird ceiling to being a stand-up as far as acting.

My wife and I have long discussions about [George] Carlin, and we refuse to accept that he died an atheist. It's just, confounding. When I talked to Kelly [George Carlin's daughter] about it, she said that George Carlin once took her at about 12 years old and said, "I've figured it out." And he says it in one of his specials sort of - he goes, "We're all energy and we're all connected. That goldfish you have, you, me, that boot laying in the street, we're all pieces of light to a giant electron.

The allure becomes, "Can I make these rooms bigger?" Can I fill these 1,500-seat rooms? Then the allure is, how much, if we're being honest, how much can I squeeze out of it financially?

I remember I used to go to The Laugh Factory and just goof off onstage, and then I'd see Dane Cook. He did a bit about his Mom making the bed in the summertime when he was a kid. He just said "Vroom!" and threw the sheet up in the air and the sheet would just stay over the bed for like a minute and a half. All he had were his arms out, but I could see the sheet. And he didn't do anything. He just kept it there. And I went, "I have to write more."

My radio show, I'd show up, I'd read the data, and I would have sound bites and stuff like that.

There is a ceiling to it and there's a stigma. Billy Crystal as brilliant as he is, he's never going to be thought of as a contemporary like Alan Arkin.

My career isn't gonna screetch to a halt because some guy in Westbury filmed ten minutes of the show. "Well, we were gonna give you the sitcom but saw that bit you did about the Mormons in Westbury, so get outta here."

There is a person that says they invented the podcast and they are suing Adam Carolla, because he is the top of the hill, for patent infringement. If this person wins, Adam Carolla, Marc Maron, Joe Rogan, Jay Mohr, Chris Hardwick, it will all go away. So, it's kind of like when someone takes your name so you can't get it on Twitter, magnified times a billion.

I realized early I can manipulate the ceiling in the middle class. The allure becomes how far I can make the ceiling rise.

The first time I watched [Keith] Olbermann, his opening monologue, I completely changed the way I approached my radio show.

Every time you talk about politics or religion, know that the moment you open your mouth you're isolating 50% of your audience, in any medium. You're taking 50% of people that'll buy tickets to come see you and you're removing them from the equation.

You could teach [George] Carlin in college. It's the construction of the word and the order of things and how they go. How all those sentences are timed perfectly.

You don't have to be Willy Loman about it. But, "Airline food is crazy. Hey, what's with these rent-a-cars?" or you go up and talk about how Christopher Walken wanted to know where my dog's tail went. That really happened to me.

This happens to me every couple of years. I'll look at someone I respect and I'll realize that he's outworking me. It changes the way I behave for the next half decade.

People that do "bits" and "jokes" or "one-liners" are going by the wayside.