Top 138 Quotes & Sayings by Paul F. Tompkins - Page 2

I always wanted to be a performer.

For me, writing is just a means to an end. It gives me something to do on stage.

When the response to comedy becomes cheering instead of laughing, that is so irritating. It's the worst.

I have a hernia scar from when I was a kid. I had a hernia when I was like in fourth grade.

What I love about improv so much is that we are all discovering it at roughly the same time. The performers are maybe, what, a half second ahead of the audience? There's very little lag time. I think of a thing, I say it, then the audience is laughing and it all happened in a second.

When I started stand-up, the people I admired most were the people who were the most themselves onstage.

It's great to work with friends. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't, but everybody goes into it knowing that. Like, 'We might be really good friends, but we might be terrible collaborators.'

A struggle in my life is to feel like I'm a good person and to feel like I'm a nice person. I try to be and anytime I fall short of that it feels really bad.

Earwolf had approached me a long time ago, even before I had started the 'Pod F. Tompkast.' I knew that I wanted to do a podcast, and I knew everyone there and that it was something for me to do, but I didn't know quite what I wanted to do yet.

I think, in a way, the stand-up prepped me for the improv, because I do a lot of riffing in my stand-up.

The way we get our news is very important, and the idea that the media doesn't always do right by us, and that they focus on things they shouldn't for ratings, is very important, and it's absolutely worthy of ridicule.

Writing a book is something I actually feel like I could do. I don't know when that would happen, but I feel like if the right idea strikes, whether it be short stories or a novel or even a memoir that would be more substantial than most of the comedian memoirs people put out where it's big font and all the chapters are like ten pages long.

When you're getting your facts from people, consider the way that they are being given to you.

The podcasting world has changed the way I book my shows. I knew that I could announce a gig on a podcast and that people would hear it. People that like what I do would hear, 'Oh, he's in my city.' And that makes it so much easier.

It's important for us all to elect people not just on blind party loyalty. We've got to really examine what candidates say and do.

When I first started doing stand-up back in Philadelphia, the idea of being a professional writer was completely beyond me. It didn't even occur to me that that was something you could do.

TV jobs that I've had in the past, one of the side effects that is so wonderful is that it gives you a sense of normalcy because you're going to the same place every day, and you sleep in your own bed at night.

Overall, I just love performing so much that when I write, I want to write for me. I kind of learned that on 'Mr. Show,' that even in an environment where you can write whatever you want - which is what that environment was - I realized, 'Man, I still want to be the guy out in front.'

I have Peter O'Toole's autograph on a first-edition copy of his autobiography that I acquired under false pretenses.

Dress how you like to dress. Don't worry so much about rules.

I enjoy very traditional stuff, and I enjoy kind of outlandish stuff, and I just really like clothes. I always have.

I have a friend who only buttons the bottom button of his suit jacket, which you're not supposed to do. 'Supposed to do.' But it's his thing, and it's his personal style, and it's like you've got to honor that. People can do whatever they want.

We all forget that when a TV network says, 'Look, we're broke,' it means that they're not making as much money as they would like to be making. They're still making millions and millions of dollars - they're just not making billions and billions of dollars.

I love clothing, and I love fashion, but I think that there is too much pedantry in fashion, and saying, 'You have to wear all of these things together; you can't button this button.' You know, all of that kind of stuff.

There are absolutely no limits with podcasting because you can do anything you want.

An audience can become a mob very easily.

The first time I did Cake Boss or Ice-T or Andrew Lloyd Webber was on 'Best Week Ever.'

I think I've almost killed myself 1,000 times eating some sandwich as fast as I possibly could and almost choking. It's a miracle that I'm still alive.

You can find nice clothes that suit your style at any number of places - Goodwill, Salvation Army, stores like that. They're all over the place. If you put in the time, you can find good stuff at decent prices.

I love The Rock. I never want him to be president.

I love to do the stream-of-consciousness thing, because it's exciting for me, and I like to think it's exciting for the audience, too.

Everyone is always asking me about clothes.

Ice-T is a great sport about people doing impressions of him, apparently, obviously, and so I have no choice but to be a great sport about being pranked by Ice-T.

I always liked dressing up. I think, because I always liked performing, I always liked costumes and things like that.

It is so easy to avoid getting in a fist fight. If you're at a point where you're squaring up against someone in public, then it's on you. There are so many ways to not get in a fist fight.

I do think I'm terrific at giving advice. Although in our hearts we usually know what we should do. It's rare that you get in a situation in life where you don't know how to proceed. You know the thing you should do, but don't want to.

I would love to see the Replacements get back together at the Spoleto Festival in South Carolina, because I never got to see them live and I love Charleston.

If written with enough care and thoughtfulness, a joke can make you laugh at a belief you hold dear.

I think that a lot of times Mr. Peanutbutter is absolutely speaking directly to the audience and saying basic, human truths that we need to hear.

Performing live can be a drag, the process that leads up to the actual performance. It's all the travel, it's working up all the details and everything, which I hate.

To have nice interactions with people is a better than to make anyone uncomfortable, than to try to fill up some kind of lull. Like anybody else, there's times when maybe I don't feel like talking with other people. You don't have to be in show business to not feel like making small talk sometimes. But we kind of are all in this together. It makes things easier - it just makes life easier, if we're all nice to each other. I'm sure that sounds terribly corny, but honestly, it's one of those simple things that it's so simple, it's true, and it's so true that it's simple.

I like working in television a lot. It's nice to have a place to go every day and a group of people to hang out with and work alongside with a common goal. But I think I'll always love stand-up more, because there's so much to discover. But you cannot beat television money with a stick. Not with a stick.

I think Jaws is one of those movies that, if it is on, I will watch it until it's finished.

There's something strange about comedy requests. I guess if you enjoy something, why not hear it again? But there's something weird about it being live, when the person is there, and asking them, "Hey, do this thing like you did it, but make it seem like you're making it up on the spot.".

With stand-up you meet almost constant rejection. You put yourself out there with your thoughts and your ideas, and you think they're funny, and you hope other people think they're funny too. The only way you're going to find out is when you do it and what the reaction is going to be. So if you're not prepared for that, if you're not willing to go along with that, it's going to be a rough road. But beyond stand-up, in terms of auditioning for acting roles, you don't get most of the roles you audition for - you get a precious few.

In the clubs, the entertainment and the restaurant business are at war with each other. You get crowds that are not the greatest, and it becomes like a babysitting job, rather than doing what you want to do. I have a more deliberate pacing in my act, and having a half interested audience is death. They have to hear what I'm saying for it to pay off.

To achieve the intimacy between performer and audience in storytelling, I feel like I have to let the audience in on my emotional state, not just, "Here's a story I'm going to tell by rote, and you're just going to listen to it, because I'm such a wonderfully entertaining fellow." It's the idea of sharing enough of myself that it's not just all about, "Look at me, look at me." There's an element to it of, "You understand what I'm talking about, right? You've been in this place that I've been in," which makes it a richer experience.

I came from a big family, with not enough attention. It's classic. I wasn't the baby, but was second to last. It's absolutely the same story that most people have in this [film] business, they're the middle children. I've encountered some people, and it's weird to me, that they were the youngest in their family. I don't understand how that works, they got the attention.

Now I don't care what people think. I did some internet campaign where I was the voice of a puppet for Ford Focus ads because they were paying me a lot of money to do it, it was a very easy gig, but then the bonus was, it turned out to be an enormous amount of fun. I've learned not to turn my nose up at things just because they're not what other people might consider cool to do. Because I've also matured enough to know, you never know where these things are going to lead, and you never know what the experience is going to be like.

I meet Daniel Day-Lewis. He's just sitting in a chair on the set. Now, I had been told that Daniel Day-Lewis was kind of an intense person. And he's really not. He's really THE MOST INTENSE PERSON THAT HAS EVER EXISTED ON THE PLANET OF EARTH. He's not doing anything, he's just sitting in a chair, and I am terrified of him as if a jungle cat has wandered onto the set, like- WHOA! What do we do! Are we supposed to move around a lot or stay perfectly still?! What are the rules of Daniel Day-Lewis?!

The difference when I'm writing a story versus writing a joke is that writing a joke is so much more about the structure and it's less about the conversation. To me, the thing that I love about stand-up is the intimacy between performer and audience.To get it even more conversational was something that really appealed to me and that I really enjoyed doing. My early experiments with it, with just telling a story from my life on stage, it was so satisfying to do. And seemingly for the audience as well. It's a different thing, and it's a different feeling and a different vibe.

I like being around people who are good conversationalists, when there's a give and take, and you are heightening an idea, exploring it together, that is my favorite thing in the world.

I think the podcast is a way to keep working out, essentially. You can keep being creative on your own schedule, without having to book a gig. It's been a great way to connect to people, especially realizing there is an audience listening. They generally gravitate to my sensibility. I love it.

I famously stole tons of VHS tapes from a video store I worked in. It was detailed in my special, Laboring Under Delusions. I worked at Tower Video and stole a bunch of videotapes from them, and then got caught and had to return the videotapes. It was a mortifying experience.

To sustain a career in show business, you have to have a certain amount of delusion, because it's such an insane way to make a living. The idea that you're going to say, "Oh, I think I deserve to be paid attention to, and people should listen to what I have to say, and everybody should look at me," that's a little bit delusional in a way.

I'm sure that like anybody else, I'm probably the sum total of my life experiences. If I'm smart and I've gained any wisdom, I have learned something from each of those experiences including different jobs I've taken throughout my life. The problem is, sometimes you don't realize you've learned something until maybe years later.

In my late teens, early 20s, when I started stand-up and I was living downtown for the first time, I was deep into my blues and Bukowski phase. And, you know, that's when that's appropriate. And I grew out of it.

The thing I have to keep in mind and I try to keep in mind about myself, about anyone, is you do the best you can do at the time.

If the idea is you're working at a job solely to pay the bills because you have ambitions to do something else, if you're not actively trying to do that other thing, you've gotta make sure you're doing that. Sometimes you've gotta take away your own safety net. But if you feel miserable in a day job, in any job, get out of that. Look for something else. Stay in that job until you have the other thing set up, and then go to that other thing. But sometimes you've just got to jump out with a parachute and trust that you're going to land someplace safe.

I love bad comedy more than I love good comedy, so I love open mics. Or I used to. But the thing that delights me more than anything else in an open-mic performer is when the comic has one joke that requires some kind of prop. But only one. The prop is always produced very awkwardly, and it never, ever pays off. The resulting embarrassment is savory and delicious.