Top 149 Quotes & Sayings by Marc Maron

For my next trick I will make everyone understand me.

When I was a bit older I had all of the George Carlin records, all of the Steve Martin records, all of the Cheech and Chong records and all of the Richard Pryor records.

It may have lost its special-ness forever and the clubs might not being doing well but I think standup is in the best shape it has been in a long time.

Jerusalem Syndrome is actually a rare psychological condition that occurs to some visitors to the Middle East. They get to Israel and just snap.

As a performer you are being used to keep people watching so the commercial endorsements that support the network can be seen by as many people as possible.

It's easy to maintain your integrity when no one is offering to buy it out.

Is it hard to make a living in show business? Yeah.

I'm sad to see the passing of the great drug warriors. I certainly did my part in that battle and I don't regret any of it.

The next evolutionary step is into the screen.

Have you ever had one of those moments when you look up and realize that you're one of those people you see on the train talking to themselves?

The demand for standup in the eighties was created by how easy it was to exploit 'comedians' and create very cheap television programming.

The Internet has usurped the collective unconscious and access to cosmic consciousness has become difficult and almost primitive.

In the sixties and seventies you could probably name all the great comics. It was still special.

I didn't know that people compared Bill Hicks and I but certainly I'm flattered if they do. I knew Bill a bit. We had dinner a couple of times and played guitar together once. I really tried to keep my distance from him professionally.

Comedy is obviously a matter of personal taste and the world always needs a clown and some people have no taste at all and any clown will do.

On some level any appearance on Television can be seen as a product endorsement.

I'm not completely sure we aren't all living in a hallucination now.

I think seeing Pryor's first movie, Live In Concert, when I was in high school changed my life. Pryor really put the heart in darkness for me.

I was also a big Woody Allen fan. When I got into college I listened to Lenny Bruce but it's taken me years to put him into context historically and really get what he did.

Show business is one of the few businesses that the devil will actually agree to own just a portion of your soul because he knows if you have a performer's ego you were probably working for him all along.

I think that standup has always been an acquired taste and there was always only a handful of performers that were really inspired.

When I was a young kid I loved Don Rickles, Buddy Hackett and Jackie Vernon.

Hopefully standup will become special again.

It seems people are more willing to let other people control their minds now and recreational drug use doesn't seem to have that same renegade sense of adventure that it once did.

The development of the comedy club industry destroyed the uniqueness and intimacy of the profession but it also created jobs for comics and bred some great performers.

When you actually meet the devil and he offers you a deal most artists eventually negotiate.

The bile makes it better. I am an information wasting machine - 100s of words a day.

We need the children of Indonesia and the Philippines to manufacture our freedom of choice.

Left wing, right wing, I am wingless and tired of trying to fly. Here comes the ground.

There are also always those burnt, hard kernels at the bottom that don't pop. You know why they don't pop? They don't pop because they have integrity.

Surveillance induced morality: relics of cultural retardation.

I don't care what anybody says, I think that George Bush is absolutely the right president to oversea the end of the world.

Well, evolution's just a theory.' And, I'm thinking to myself, 'Well, thank goodness gravity's a law.'

I used to do a lot of drugs. I didn't stop because I didn't enjoy them; I stopped because I couldn't handle the commitment.

I think the reason Jesus is so popular, just on a celebrity level, is that he died at the peak of his career.

That’s the big challenge of life—to chisel disappointment into wisdom so people respect you and you don’t annoy your friends with your whining.

I feel bad for people who have never been addicted to anything, because they're the real losers. You want to know why? Because they don't know what it's like to really want something - and then get it again and again and again.

It's not all about love. That's half of it... The other half is about that moment you have with yourself when you're looking in the mirror, and you just go, 'Oh man. I'm going to compromise my dreams, get fat, sick, old and die someday. I kind of want to have someone around for that.'

Most of my comedy writing happens through improvisation on stage; doing it in the moment.

That's an animal fable about humility. If you survive your mistake, you must learn from it. Accept that you're fragile, vulnerable, and sometimes stupid. Realize that you're not immortal and you've got to take care of yourself. And then laugh it off and fly away.

Buying my wife a gun sort of like me saying, ' You know, I kinda want to kill myself, but I want it to be a surprise'.

We’re built to deal with death, disease, failure, struggle, heartbreak, problems. It’s what separates us from the animals and why we envy and love animals so much. We’re aware of it all and have to process it. The way we each handle being human is where all the good stories, jokes, art, wisdom, revelations, and bullshit come from.

In most cases the only difference between depression and disappointment is your level of commitment.

Maybe depression is the most reasonable response to all the crap around us. Maybe it's the happy people who need medication.

The truth is, I can’t read anything with any distance. Every book is a self-help book to me. Just having them makes me feel better.

Dogs are too much to handle. I don't need anything in my house that's needier than me.

I've had this look for about a year. I usually grow this beard out around Christmas. I like to go to malls dressed as Jesus, and I like to then walk around the mall and go, 'No! No! This wasn't what it was supposed to be about, people!' Then if there's a Santa at the mall, I walk up to him and say, 'Listen, fat man, you're just a clown at my birthday party.'

You know when you make popcorn there are always those fluffy white kernels that are fun and good to eat but there are also always those burnt, black kernels that don’t pop. You know why they don’t pop? Because they have integrity.

You get all excited to give her the ring, and it's real emotional, and you give it to her, and she cries. And a second later, you're like, 'Damn, I could have had a car.'

There's this whole post-modern, nuevo beatnik, retro-bohemian thing going on, you know what I mean? You walk into some coffee shops, and it feels like you're an ex-patriot in Paris in the 20s. You're like, 'Hey, isn't that a young Ernest Hemingway over there? Yeah, I think it is! Hey, let's go have a look and see what he's writing... It's a Gap application.'

You can't avoid pain in life. It's how you handle pain, that's what defines you.

Is there any indication we shouldn't be depressed - are you living on the same planet that I am? Do you ever think that depression might be the reasonable human response to the crap we're going through as a species, meant to propel us into the next evolutionary step, or at least into taking some different course of action so we might survive? Do you ever think that maybe it's the happy people that are really screwed up in the head?

It amazes me that we are all on Twitter and Facebook. By "we" I mean adults. We're adults, right? But emotionally we're a culture of seven-year-olds. Have you ever had that moment when are you updating your status and you realize that every status update is just a variation on a single request: "Would someone please acknowledge me?

Your insecurity and neediness is what makes you a big neurotic ball of comedy genius.

If you can't afford the good food or if you can't afford health care or if you don't have a job or if your car is dangerous because you can't get it fixed and you DIE, you just lost the game-bzzzzz-thanks for playing extreme capitalism.

They are not testing comics for drugs. If our job is dependent on that, there would be three working comics in the country, and two of them would have puppets.

When I was a young comic in New York and I wasn't getting any work, I was wandering around the Lower East Side with my notebook. I would stop at the guitar place on St. Mark's and talk to that dude for a while, then I'd go to the bookstore and talk to that dude for a little while. I had a guy over at the record store, and I'd talk to him for a while. It kept me connected to life.

I'm not for everyone. I'm barely for me.

Faith in the face of disappointment is only enhanced by laughter in the face of pain.

Art is supposed to punch you in the brain, and it's supposed to stay punched.