My first real job, I sold Christmas trees when I was twelve for extra money. I did that until I was fifteen. Then I bagged groceries, and I worked at the first Borders ever in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
— Bill Hader
I remember being unbelievable bummed when 'Freaks and Geeks' was canceled.
I'm always up before everybody else. I also crash at 3 o'clock when everybody's at their prime.
I grew up with my two sisters and my mom, so it's my lot in life to be surrounded by women.
Even though it doesn't look like it, I run. On a treadmill. And I bounce around to all the songs on my iPod - the Pixies, Wagner, Richard and Linda Thompson, even books on tape. Just not self-help ones.
Oddly enough, I have really bad stage fright - getting up in front of people. And I made a living going on live television.
I collect movies. So I have all those in binders. I don't have the DVDs out. I put them in binders.
Pete Davidson - he's in the movie 'Trainwreck.' He has a small part in it. I told Lorne Michaels about him, said he was really funny.
I was offered a lot of supporting crazy parts in comedies because that's all I had done.
My parents were supportive. I didn't have good grades, but they could tell I wasn't lazy.
I don't like the sound of my voice or how I look or anything.
Every relationship is work.
I get migraines a lot. I get them when I'm stressed out. My brain freezes, and I just try to get through that.
David Sedaris is so good that it makes me mad.
I've been a big fan of David Wain's and was honored to get to be in one of his projects.
The nature of 'SNL' is that it's so in-the-moment.
When I got to 'Saturday Night Live,' it was a lot like going from pre-school to Harvard, and it took a long time to figure stuff out.
People ask me, 'Did you always want to be on SNL?' No, actually, it never crossed my mind. It didn't even seem possible. It would've been like saying, 'Hey, do you wanna go to the moon?'
I saw 'A Clockwork Orange' when I was 11. When you watch 'Clockwork Orange' at 11, it either totally scares you from watching movies, or you want to become a filmmaker. I was the latter.
Comedy is incredibly hard. You have to be loose. You have to be not afraid to fail.
I learned a lot just watching people perform.
I set the time on my iPhone to be 30 minutes late, so I'm only an hour and a half late to appointments now.
Fred Willard still makes me laugh.
When people tell you what doesn't work, they're usually right. When they tell you how to fix it, they're usually wrong.
You learn quickly at 'SNL' you get in trouble if you compare yourself to other people, where they're at, or what other people had done before you.
I have a lot of incomplete short films and incomplete scripts out there.
I really liked John Candy in 'Planes, Trains & Automobiles.' He was so good in that movie.
I can't do Twitter or Facebook, mostly because I feel like I'm the type of person who has to regiment the amount of time I spend doing certain things or I'll just wade in it, and then I'll never come out.
My wife and I got to go onstage at a Flaming Lips concert at Webster Hall once. We dressed up like Scientology aliens and danced around. We had a shootout onstage with Santa Claus.
I don't believe in the term 'guilty pleasure,' because it implies I should feel ashamed for liking something. A real guilty pleasure would be, I don't know, taking gratification in some stranger's ghastly death or something - which I guess I do enjoy, because I read a ton of true crime.
Jon Ronson makes me laugh. I've read all of his books.
Top Ten lists make me insane. I just know they're going to change daily.
I work a lot, and it's kind of like, you meet people, and you just click. It's not like I'm looking at something and thinking: 'South Park' - how do I get on that?' I just became friends with those guys first. They're nice guys.
I'm the only one in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that has Final Draft on my computer. Then you show up and go to any coffee shop in L.A., and there are a hundred people your age with Final Draft.
I really enjoyed playing Vinny Vedecci, the Italian talk show host. He was the first character I ever came up with where I gave him a name and a way of dressing.
I wrote a fan e-mail to Michael Chabon.
I'm very close to my sisters.
Good directors give short and specific instructions to their actors.
Voices are a good way to get in and out of things. James Carville constantly calls my wife to say I'll be home late. Mandy Patinkin and Al Pacino call to get me restaurant reservations.
Everything is so tech now; everyone is so connected that way.
A person being patient with an insane person is my favorite thing in the world.
I would do 'Superbad,' and the next offers you would get would all be crazy cop characters or crazy security guards or something.
I like when you are telling a story and fall into an impression.
When I was on 'SNL,' I was getting weirdly anxious about being on camera, which I had never really done before. And so my solution was just to not watch my stuff. And then I found out that other actors do it, too, and I felt less weird about it.
I tried to get people at 'South Park' into 'Downton Abbey,' and it didn't work. I think they were like, 'Downton Abbey?' What?' And I kinda made a big plea in the writer's room, like, 'Guys, you should really watch it. It's good. It's addicting. My wife and I are obsessed with it.'
I met Robin Williams a few times, and he was a beautiful guy.
George Saunders is a complete genius.
I've seen people who come to work say, 'No, I'm doing it this way, and that's that.' I'm the opposite - I like being out of my element; it's where I like to live.
To be honest, I don't know how comedy works.
Getting 'SNL' was pretty amazing, so just to be able to have an eight-year career there and be really happy with everything I did, it was pretty big.
