Colin Quinn's Quotes

Stand-up is live, so I'm used to being live for most of my career. It's interesting.

That's the beauty of being a comedian - it's the one job you're allowed to do that. We're lucky. We're really lucky.

The only people who like to live alone more than comics are priests.

Those early days of comedy are when you get addicted to it.

With comedians, you have that understanding that we're trying to get laughs.

You can't make everybody laugh. You gotta just do what you think is funny. Just be obstreperous to everybody.

You can't make money on Broadway. You make nothing. You maybe make like $1,350 a week after you pay out all the producers.

A weird sort of awareness set in, like, 'Wow. My standup isn't just separate from everything else I do anymore.' With Twitter and Face book, everything is universal that everything everybody says gets seen.

For the most part, comedians are pretty friendly with each other. They always say they badmouth each other, but most of the time, they're friends. We're the only ones that can really stand our type of humor.

He is very dry but also very funny... I think people tend to feel odd when I do my act. Unless you are an ironic person, it's not a good place for you to be.

I feel most empires fell when they started to act human, but then look at Russia. They kept a pretty strong hand, and they fell from Afghanistan alone because Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires. I guess you just can't sustain it.

I love people, I love studying people more than history. So whatever situation I see, then I look at, what were the people like, more than history itself.

I think I identify more with the smart guy, but most people might take umbrage at that. I like to think of myself as a real thinker, but I suppose people might beg to differ.

I've been to Japan, I've been to China, I've been to Africa, I've been to the Middle East, I've been to Europe a little bit. I've never been to South America.

If I had to give up everything else and keep just one aspect of the job, I'd have to keep writing because I love it. Yes, I enjoy performing, too. But I couldn't give up writing material.

Marie Antoinette was funny, I'm sure she was just misinterpreted. You know the 'Let them eat cake' line. She seems like she was kind of funny, like a Chelsea Handler or Kathy Griffin type.

So instead of talking about theoretical ways of ending the war and violence, I say that we have to get rid of the individual asholes in each office and situation.

The mistake that people make in stand-up is thinking they're profound or they're deep when there are so many people who have more worthwhile ways of phrasing things.

Twitter is one of those dangerous toys that if it gets in the hands of the wrong person you'll have the mind of a 12-year-old masquerading as an adult.

When I look back now I realize I was such an obnoxious kid but, you know, I went to schools like you, like a public school in New York so compared to the anarchy that was going on there, they really wouldn't - I wasn't like a bad kid. I saw people come in and punch the teachers.

You know how it is with writing. You just write what you want to write. There's no way to predict what is good or bad. You just do what you think is funny, and either it works or you're finished. It's impossible to predict anything.

You know, the funny thing about Lorne and that show is that, you can go over one million things, but in a business of bean counters, he still likes to laugh at small things and creates a show around it.

Humanity is a crazy contradiction. I accept us for who we are. We're not that great. Every time we take a step forward we go back to the same primitive behavior. We're meant to be this way. It's not our fault, it's just who we are.

The ancient Greeks were the first ones to say an unexamined life is not worth living. They don't tell you of course what we found out, an examined life not that fascinating either.

My name has zero value.

My stand-up act? I combine the fact that the world is a violent place with the fact that each person is responsible for the situation they are in.