Anthony Jeselnik quotes
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“My girlfriend makes me want to be a better person... so I can get a better girlfriend.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“Dark humor appealed to me because it was a bigger laugh than you could get with anything else. Seeing people laugh at something inappropriate with their whole bodies, a guttural, visceral laugh beyond a mere "hah."”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“This past Christmas, I told my girlfriend for months in advance that all I wanted was an Xbox. That's it. Beginning and end of list, Xbox. You know what she got me? A homemade frame with a picture of us from our first date together. Which was fine. Because I got her an Xbox.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“There is nothing that's off limits. If people think something is off limits, I make it my business to go make a joke about it; that's my job.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
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“Yesterday I accidentally hit a little kid with my car. It wasn't serious — nobody saw me.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“People are surprised that I'm nice and it helps me out a little bit; it's easy to be nice when everyone thinks you're going to be a jerk but if people think you're a nice guy then it's tough because it's what they expect.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“I’m not a religious person; I would call myself an atheist. I don’t have a good story behind it, I’m just reasonable.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“One of my favorite things on the show was just getting to do my own monologue and talking about someone who killed themselves, or making a joke about some horrible tragedy - I love being able to fight for and get on TV. I just think it's so different.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
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“You don't know anything about pain until you've seen your own baby drowned in a tub... and you definitely don't know anything about how to wash a baby.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“I do dark [humor]. I like people who are silly and weird and people who are surprising and good at what they do.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“My girlfriend is upset about her new haircut. I don't understand why she's crying. I'm the one who has to get a new girlfriend.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“I was always cutting words. I even would write my jokes in my notebook. I still do this, almost like a poem.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
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“Whenever I meet a pretty girl, the first thing I look for is intelligence; because if she doesn't have that, then she’s mine.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“I was a terrible employee. I've been fired from almost every job I've ever had, luckily, in a good way, or else I'd be stuck. I would always joke around with everybody, and no one enjoyed my humor.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“It was important to me to be cool as a comedian. I didn't want to be a crowd-pleaser who sent out the vibe of, "I need you guys." I wanted to be so cool that the audience could leave and I would still be killing, that I didn't want to have to rely on them or need them. That really appealed to me.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“The one thing I've found you really can't joke about - and people think it's death or something - is money. No one thinks it's funny, whether you have it or you don't. Money is just something no one seems to like joking about.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
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“I'm a realist all the way. I'm too cynical to be an optimist. But I've lived too much of a charmed life so far to ever be a pessimist.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“I like the idea of being the funny guy in the dramatic thing, playing a hit man with a weird sense of humor.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“I always loved comedy, but it never seemed like something that I could do professionally.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“I'm not a comedy writer, I'm a comedian, so I only write stuff that I would want to say.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
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“Disasters are funny to me. As a comedian you learn from failure, so I'm always trying to put myself in a situation that does not seem ideal for my comedy and see how it works.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“If I tell a joke on stage and the crowd laughs for a minute, I stand there for a minute and enjoy them laughing before I go on to the next joke. On TV, if I stand there for a minute while they laugh, I look like an idiot who can't remember the next joke.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“On the show, you have to be more charismatic, a little smoother, but I think I can still be that prince of darkness. You just have to learn the tricks of the TV trade as well.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“In a late-night monologue, it's not just about being funny; you have to come off as knowledgeable. You have to cultivate a persona of trust and intelligence and likeability.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
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“I never go see live comedy shows because I just sit in the audience thinking, "Here's what I would say. Here's what I would do if I got up there." It drives me crazy.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“In comedy, I hate that cop-out where you say, "Just kidding." I know you're just kidding. Don't insult my intelligence by spelling it out for me that much.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“I have that need in me, I want everyone to love me, but I'm embarrassed by that need, so I wanted to cover it up in my persona. I felt like I wouldn't be able to do stand-up for a career if I was needy. I didn't want to be complaining or whining onstage. I wanted to be cool and do exactly what I wanted to do. That way I would never have to change for anybody.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“I want people to just be paying attention even if they're not necessarily laughing at something, or if it takes them a while to get something, I don't mind that. If half the crowd gets the joke and the other half is sitting there scratching their heads, that's just as good for me if I like the joke, because I feel like it just brings people in more.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
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“Silence means they [the audience] are paying attention. Even if I drop bombs and they're dead quiet, it's still okay. If they start talking, that's when you've lost them.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“On Twitter, when someone would die, I would write a joke. Or if there's a tragedy, I would write a joke and tweet it. That was my thing, and then at a certain point, people started demanding it.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“The driving force behind doing everything that I've been doing as a stand-up is having problems with authority and not liking to be told what to do.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“I had written for Jimmy Kimmel and Sarah Silverman in the past. Jimmy had a different voice, and different priorities. He couldnt be the bad guy in the joke; he couldnt upset people, really.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
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“In the second grade, I would just get bored and a joke would pop into my head and I would have to say it. It was almost like I had some brilliant novel in my head that I had to get down, and I would interrupt class all the time and get in trouble.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“Im not the voice of reason; Im more the guy using these offensive topics as fodder to raise tension in a joke.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“Everyone has the same kind of fears; everyone has the same big problems in the world, which is, like, fear of death and I hope horrible things dont happen to my family, but they do. And I think people laugh at them as this great release.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“I enjoyed writing for someone elses voice, but I wasnt very good at it.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
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“The world is full of horrible things...”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“I've spent the past two years looking for my ex-girlfriend’s killer… but no one will do it.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“Charlie Sheen called his boss on 'Two and a Half Men' a 'Jew ki**' and expected to go back to work. That’s crazy. If you could do that and keep your job, then everybody would do it.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“Wayne Brady, I don’t understand why people keep joking that you’re not black. Wayne Brady, you are BLACK. After all, I only remember you for all the years you played an uppity slave on ‘Who’s Line is it Anyway?’.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
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“God, that Anthony Jeselnik Show sounds really funny.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“Katey Sagal, you are an incredible actress. You worked on ‘Married with Children,’ the show that changed comedy, ‘Sons of Anarchy,’ the show that took comedy to a whole new level and ‘8 Simple Rules,’ the show that killed John Ritter.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“When I finished high school, I wanted to take all my graduation money and buy myself a motorcycle. But my mom said no. See, she had a brother who died in a horrible motorcycle accident when he was 18. And I could just have his motorcycle.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“Do whatever you want to do, whenever you want to do it”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
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“Whenever I’m about to have sex with a girl, I play it smart and just automatically assume she has herpes; because that way I don’t have to tell her about my herpes.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“My ex-girlfriend owned a parakeet…oh my god, that f**king thing would never shut up. But the bird was cool.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“Larry King is so old, he's actually one of the Jews that killed Christ.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“I've got a long history of suicid in my family; the good news is it skips a generation, so, if I'm lucky, my kids will kill themselves.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
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“Mike Tyson, what can I say about you that hasn’t already been the title of a Richard Pryor album?”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“You know how everybody has that one weird creepy uncle? Well, Seth Green looks like he got raped by all of them.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“Ellen Barkin, your upcoming TV show ‘The New Normal’ premiers on September 11th. September 11th, that sounds about right. Every clip I’ve seen feels like I’m watching a third tower collapse.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“I would write 100 jokes a day. Most of them were terrible. But I just said, 'I'll write more than everybody else, and that's how I'll get better.'”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
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“I loved Stephen Wright, and I loved Mitch Hedberg, but they seemed like geniuses you could never emulate. You'd just be ripping them off.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“I know her in the biblical senseand when I say that, I mean I don't believe a word she says.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“I like seeing what the comedian thinks is funny, not just what they think I'll think is funny.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
“Every comic went through their Mitch Hedberg phase - the glasses, the hair in the face - and you knew immediately when they were doing it.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik -
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“I never knew if I would get my own show, but I knew I loved stand-up.”
-- Anthony Jeselnik
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