You spend so much time in the world of virtual that the actual - which nothing is more actual than stand-up - it's a painful experience for the audience, and the comedian a lot of time - we miss that.
— Jerry Seinfeld
Being a stand-up is my mission in life; it's my passion. My ongoing goal is to simply be funny, on my own, in front of a roomful of strangers.
There are very few people who really appreciate my shows. People come to the show and they pay and they enjoy it, but I don't really think most people really understand what they've seen.
When you're in comedy, people always come up and say, 'Oh, it must be so hard.' It really isn't hard unless you're not good at it. If you can do it, its really kind of fun and easy.
It takes up enough of my time and interest just working on comedy. I just enjoy it and love doing it.
Funny is the world I live in. You're funny, I'm interested. You're not funny, I'm not interested.
I do probably 60 concerts a year in the States. And I go out to clubs in the week. I'm doing new stuff all the time.
A lot of advertising has gotten worse. I think it's kind of lost its nerve, to be honest with you. I feel like the advertising of the '60s, they were nervier. You know why? Because there was less at stake.
My theory is 98 percent of all human endeavor is killing time.
I have this old '57 Porsche Speedster, and the way the door closes, I'll just sit there and listen to the sound of the latch going, 'cluh-CLICK-click.' That door! I live for that door. Whatever the opposite of planned obsolescence is, that's what I'm into.
As a comedian, I found this thing, this profession, that suits my mind and life force. To drop it to do something else? I just don't get that.
To a guy like me, a laugh is full of information.
When I was a comic in the 1980s, I was on the road somewhere every day, and I'd get back to the hotel, and it was Carson and Letterman, and I looked forward to that all day.
When I jumped off a roof in Cannes in a bee costume, I looked ridiculous. But this is my business; I have to humiliate myself.
If you go to a bad movie, it's two hours. If you're in a bad movie, it's two years.
Once you start doing only what you've already proven you can do, you're on the road to death.
Marriage is like a game of chess except the board is flowing water, the pieces are made of smoke and no move you make will have any effect on the outcome.
I kind of thought that stand-up comedy would suffer from the Internet because people seem to know more about the craft of stand-up than ever before. I thought it would seem trite. Kind of like if you know more about magicians, you wouldn't love them.
For me, it's a purity thing about the joke itself. It's a test of a joke whether or not you do it completely clean and it works. If it does, then that's a legitimate item you have there. For me, it's nothing to do with finding those words offensive. It's just not what I'm in search of. Do it clean, and you are really earning that laugh.
Crankiness is at the essence of all comedy. My wife and I were discussing the different types of cranky. There's entertaining cranky, annoying cranky, angry cranky.
I'm a big believer than a great bit is a great bit - if I go and see someone I love, like Robert Klein. I want to hear some classics and some new stuff. But a great stand-up bit takes a long time to really polish and perfect, and they're beautiful things when they're done.
If you get something right, you really feel it, right in your chest, on stage. I think it's an incomparable experience.
Forty is when you actually begin even deserving to be on stage telling people what you think.
Stand-up is hard. Or to keep it at a certain level is hard: I have no writers but me.
We want to do a lot of stuff; we're not in great shape. We didn't get a good night's sleep. We're a little depressed. Coffee solves all these problems in one delightful little cup.
You don't even really need a place. But you feel like you're doing something. That is what coffee is. And that is one of the geniuses of the new coffee culture.
A lot of stuff I do out of pure obsessiveness.
I think of myself more as a sportsman than I do an artist.
If you're a surfer, you just want to surf. You don't know if anyone's going to see you, and you don't really care if they see you. You just live for that feeling.
Nobody enjoys the 'little show about nothing' humor more than me, but that is never the way I look at it.
I can walk through a hotel lobby and watch people at the desk and see what they're doing. People don't look at me. They don't even know I'm there.
I'll tell you one thing, since I'm married, single people look absolutely ridiculous to me.
You have to motivate yourself with challenges. That's how you know you're still alive.
We sold 'Seinfeld' all over the world but it was a very specific kind of show. In some countries it went down really well, in others they hated it.
The Internet offers opportunities that are more unique than ever before. With TV, I know I'm making 22 minutes; I know there's a commercial in the middle. With the Internet, no one knows anything. No rules.
The worst way of flying, I think, is standby. It never works. That's why they call it standby. You end up standing there going, 'Bye!'
I don't need you to be funny. I don't want to be entertained.
You want to do good things, and once you've done a couple of good things in a row, you think 'Well gee, let's not mess this up.' But I am lucky at this point that I have something I really love to do, and it completely holds my attention. I never feel frustrated by it.
I have no interest in gender or race or anything like that. But everyone else is kind of, with their calculating - is this the exact right mix? I think that's - to me it's anti-comedy. It's more about PC-nonsense.
Forty to 60 I would say is your prime. That's when you know the most, you've seen the most, you understand the most, and you still have some physical energy.
I've done a number of Super Bowl ads. And that is the best advertising of the year. That is when people realize they're going to be compared directly against other ads.
I do a little thing about the way people shake the sweetener packet. You know, like they're all excited. I want to get all the granules down to one end. I love all these rituals.
There's different kinds of laughs. It's like a baseball lineup: this guy's your power hitter, this guy gets on base, this guy works out walks. If everybody does their job, we're gonna win.
I like money, but it's never been about the money.
A lot of times, you could play me just the laughs from my set, and I could tell you, from the laugh, what the joke was. Because they match.
I don't want to be too critical of what other people do, but when people go back to do the same thing that they did, I'm completely confused. I'm like, 'Didn't you make that movie already?' I've been very fortunate, and I'm well taken care of, so the least I can do is try to go forward.
When you make a TV show, they always say you're a guest in someone's home. Online, you're a guest in someone's face. So that's why I try to make it sound and look and feel very inviting and attractive, because I know that I'm in your face.
Well, Howard Stern has been doing his impression of me for years. It doesn't really bother me.
I won't do something unless I can get at least two or three good laughs out of it. If I can't, it's not gonna make the team.
Men like a ref decision because they just want to get back to the game.
