Top 94 Quotes & Sayings by John Mulaney
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American comedian John Mulaney.
Last updated on September 17, 2024.
Being president looks like the worst job in the world.
I never turn on the crowd. Sometimes, you think it's a terrible show, and then afterward, sometimes people say they really liked it. So turning on the crowd is only going to alienate the few people who might like it. What do I do in that situation? Get through it.
I look back on being 17 and think, 'Oh my God, how did I not die?'
I have too many influences to name. I like a wide variety of stuff, which I think has been helpful. I liked every comedian I saw on TV growing up in the '80s. Every comedian.
I have found that people who really want to work at 'Saturday Night Live' and pursue it get pretty close. You have to be funny - but everyone who works there, it was their dream to work there. So it's kind of nice in that way - there's a lot of people who say, 'I just always wanted to do this, and now I'm doing it.'
If something is very, very funny but possibly controversial, if it's truly funny, then it's worth doing. Things aren't worth doing for the sake of being controversial.
It's been very funny to try to act like an adult. Even getting dressed. Every day, I'm like, 'Should I wear a blazer and walk around with an umbrella? Do I carry a briefcase?' Because I'm trying to be some image of the adults I saw on TV growing up.
The more you do stuff, the better you get at dealing with how you still fail at it a lot of the time.
Things have to be funny first, and if they want to have a point, that's awesome.
My dad is and was very funny and had a really dry sense of humor, which, as a kid, seemed un-fun. But in retrospect, it's kind of hilarious.
Most open-mic experiences I had were okay.
Going on the road for long stretches can seem daunting, and I certainly miss being home sometimes, but the chance to see so many different cities, let alone perform in them, is something I am really grateful for.
All my money is in a savings account. My dad has explained the stock market to me maybe 75 times. I still don't understand it.
I love comedians that dive into politics. I personally don't feel comfortable, with my background, weighing in unless I have a take that I think is funny enough that I would put it in front of an audience.
When you have something that you did so many jobs on and were so front and center on, and then people dislike it, you want to learn lessons from it, and you want to move on, and you want to move on too fast.
I've seen most of the major, important shows, but I watch them all at once, like movies, so my TV relationships are still with shows like 'Law And Order: SVU,' 'Shark Tank,' and HGTV.
If someone had written a review saying, ''Oh, Hello' is stupid,' we would have said, 'Yeah, it is. You're absolutely right.' That people liked it was extremely cool.
I don't make plans anymore. So I'm not living minute to minute.
I like to pace onstage.
Bill Clinton fascinates me because, at the time, it seemed like his shenanigans and the people after him were the biggest political stories you could ever imagine. I remember when the 'Starr Report' was published in the newspaper, all of us were reading it in the high-school cafeteria, and a dean started taking the newspapers away from us.
It's important to remember that life is a joke, and that outlook grants a lot of perspective, but I don't think comedy should change and become political due to other things. It should just laugh at that cosmic joke that life is all the time.
My childhood was completely dominated by Bill Clinton and the OJ trial. I don't think we had a family dinner where one didn't come up.
Nick Kroll, A.D. Miles, Chelsea Peretti - those were the people I was always doing open mics with.
I plan to join the 'SNL' band as a maraca player and stand behind saxophonist Lenny Pickett. That way they will at least cut to me before commercial breaks. I'll be sure to look right into camera.
I like making fun of myself a lot. I like being made fun of, too. I've always enjoyed it. There's just something really, really funny about someone tearing into me.
Sometimes I - with comedy, it's like someone liking you in high school. They either do, or they don't. And when they don't, they don't. And that's it. There are no appeals. You show up, and you're like, 'Hi! I'm -' and you stumble, and they're like, 'It's over.'
Stand-up for me is just my opinions on things, so it wouldn't be as fun translated into a sketch. Nor would a sketch be as fun if it were me standing there saying it.
As I got into high school and after puberty, I was a little more inward. I was a real extrovert when I was little, but I don't know, I just got quieter... With my friends, I was still an extrovert.
I still like to turn on the TV and watch whatever's on.
You can do good work simply staying up all night and eating nothing but junk food, but probably not in the long term.
I just watched a ton of comedy and saw a ton of different styles, and eventually you think, 'Oh, yeah, I could be like that.'
You can't always see both sides of the story. Eventually, you have to pick a side and stick with it. No more equivocating. You have to commit.
I never knew you were supposed to push off of your feet when you walked. And I tried it, and I walked much faster.
I'm pretty self-critical about everything I've ever done: stand-up, 'SNL.'
The difficulty of getting a movie made through a major studio is so extreme that when a movie comes out, everyone should give it four stars because it was accomplished.
Ill book a ticket on some garbage airline. I dont wanna name an actual airline so lets make one up, lets just call it like Delta Airlines
Things don't exist until they exist.
I like when things are crazy. Something good comes out of exhaustion.
I kind of thought, wouldn't it be funny to take a swing at being on the weird side of mainstream?
I've always believed that you often need less. You don't need to hear why people are friends, you don't need to hear why people are roommates, you don't need to hear why someone would help a friend to do something.
Maybe I just have high self-esteem, but I have a lot that I really enjoy.
In terms of, like, instant relief, canceling plans is like heroin.
I wish I could go tell 12-year-old me like I don't worry that you just fainted in front of all the girls, one day you'll be able to make this into an episode of TV.
I was always the squarest person in the cool room, and alternatively, sometimes the weirder person at the mainstream table.
Excuse me: I am homeless. I am gay. I have AIDS. I'm new in town.
I stopped drinking when I was 23. I kind of started when I was 13, so it was a 10-year run. But I just became a bad, annoying drunk child, so when I stopped, I'd done a lot of things I wasn't proud of.
You all have a relative who is an expert even though they really don't know what they're talking about.
Occasionally you get that one person that says "I really like that one part of this joke" and you go, "Oh thank you that's my favorite part too." But no, in order for it to be authentic hopefully you have jokes that everyone can just get on board with and then you have a few things for yourself.
Why do people shush animals? Theyve never spoken
If you’re comparing the badness of two words and you won’t even say one of them [the n-word], that’s the worse word.
I was new to acting on a stage in a narrative as opposed to acting on a stage as a stand-up. And like everything else it's just like comfort level. The first time I did stand-up I was at a place called the B3 in New York on Third and Avenue B and I not only didn't take the mic out of the stand, but I clutched the stand of the entire time.
I have a lot of stories about being a kid because it was the last time I was interesting.
It's important to remember that life is a joke and that outlook grants a lot of perspective, but I don't think comedy should change and become political due to other things. It should just laugh at that cosmic joke that life is all the time.
I'm a very lucky person. I'm an idiot, and I've shoveled through life rather nicely so far, so I don't feel like I deserve good treatment.
People having expectations maybe means they've enjoyed what I've done.
I think for many of us - speaking for just a pocket of the country - we trusted Obama. So when you leave your baby with your mom to watch, you don't run home and check the nanny cam. But now we've left the baby with Gary Busey, so we're going to be a lot more on it.
Comfort is everything. You start doing something and you want it to be perfect right away, but most babies are born ugly and then they shake it out and you get beautiful toddlers.
It's nice when you're nervous and everybody's like, "Yeah, you should be nervous." Because a lot of times you're anxious and people say, "Relax. Shut up." And that just feels like, Well, I guess I'm also crazy.
I like to turn on the TV and watch whatever's on. Nick Kroll does that a lot. He doesn't watch important shows. He'll just turn on a documentary on Mia Hamm and watch it for an hour. Whatever's on, we watch.
It is 100% easier not to do things than to do them, and so much fun not to do them - especially when you were supposed to do them. In terms of instant relief, canceling plans is like heroin.
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