W. M. L. Jay Quotes

[Bob] Dylan would cut out phrases from magazines and then paste them together.

While [Bob] Dylan's folk fans thought he was selling out [in 1965-67], actually Dylan was lodging a stronger, deeper critique of American hypocrisy.

I've been doing stand-up 29 years; there is no other career when you're finding your stride 30 years into it.

People are more interested in someone who goes on stage and tells the truth.

Not everyone likes sports. Gandhi and Malcolm X come to mind.

'Christopher Walken' is my "Hotel California," but I've done it so much

All that waiting around for a glimmer of stage time, just getting angry every week... It was just an oppressive, horrible, horrible place to be. I went to work feeling nauseous.

I hate golf. I do not understand how anyone can enjoy it, much less love it.

What I like about stand-up is, it's truthful. I'm not up there trying to get laid or look cool. I'm up there because I really love it, and it makes people happier.

Marc Maron's podcast success has nothing to do with my podcast success. If I do a quarter of a million downloads, I can show that to an advertiser as a fact, and that's that.

I think I made a mistake once... yeah... it was only once.

I wasn't the guy everyone liked. I was the guy that wouldn't shut up.

I was the youngest kid on my street, the youngest comic in the clubs. I always felt like I was playing catch-up. I was very angry.

If it's going to really make them happy for me to do it, I'll do Walken. I've got no problem with it at all.

I'd go back, yeah. I don't care, I got a kid, man - I'll sell tampons. I mean, there's no selling-out once you get a kid. I got a kid.

I never minded George Steinbrenner spending obscene amounts of money to put the best product on the field.

But if applause throws off your timing, then you're not the kind of comedian I would like to see. All you have to do is stand there and take it.

You don't really drive in cabs in L.A. unless you're broke or homeless - or if you're broke and driving the cab.

There's not a rocket scientist, not a doctor, not an accountant that 30 years in goes, "Oh, now I'm getting it. Now I can't wait to get back out there because I'm better than ever."

Every imperfection you have as a man makes a sound as it knifes through satin sheets.

Joan Rivers is 80 and she's fantastic. She lives in mortal fear of not filling that 1,500-seat room.

True Yankees are born, not made.

I'm oddly not competitive. What I love about show business is there is a home for everyone.

I think stand-up's, the older they get, the better they get.

I know content-wise I leave nothing to chance. I have no anxiety about what I'm going to do once I'm out on stage.

If you were an actor, anybody could go on Broadway and take a George Carlin hour and do it on stage as a one man show. They're all stand alone essays.

The jokes were perfect! Then George Carlin started talking about the seven dirty words you can't say on television, then it evolved into social commentary.

If anyone thinks my show was 'pretty good,' then I've completely failed.

When I'm home I'm in much more of a routine like I said, which I like. On the road everything gets flip-flopped.

You can vibe out when people are getting tired or they're too drunk to keep going along with.

Yogi Berra put it best, "If people don't want to come, we can't stop them."

All I can do when I'm on stage is do a show where when I come back into town they cannot possibly afford to miss the show because they remember how fun it was.

George Carlin put it best. He said, "My old act was so easy to do because there was so little of me in it."

When I watch like The Office I'm fascinated because most of America works in an environment where they see the same eight people every day.

I don't have a nine-to-five brain.

I'm a comic because I don't want to do the nine-to-five, I have to modify that and say I'm a comic because I have an inability to do a nine-to-five.

I don't care about anybody's perception of me except for the audience.

I'm going to eventually shoot my own special, because you have to own your own content. My Turn (2003), that's never been released on DVD.

This is NOT a pretty good business. You cannot be pretty good and be a national headliner. That becomes the allure.

I don't know how you do it [working at office]; I would just get up and walk out. That's what I did for pretty much every job I've ever had.

I don't have the ability to do a nine-to-five nor do I have the desire to. Stand-up is the only thing that's come completely naturally to me.

What's great about stand-up unlike athletes and other things when you get old you get old and rusty.

As far as in my career, I don't know what other form there is. I would love to do a talk show.

We all shared this experience. We all had one brain, we were one giant organism working and having joy. "What about Walken?" Sorry, bro...Maybe I should've done an hour and 34 minutes.

I've asked Comedy Central, and they just say, "I don't know." It took Showtime two years to put my special on DVD. Owning your own content is the single most important thing in the world.

I realized early I can manipulate the ceiling in the middle class. The allure becomes how far I can make the ceiling rise.

People that do "bits" and "jokes" or "one-liners" are going by the wayside.

You could teach [George] Carlin in college. It's the construction of the word and the order of things and how they go. How all those sentences are timed perfectly.

You remember from watching the show, there are no "jokes." That's why if you see people on Twitter accusing me of being a "joke thief," I just tell them to come to one of my shows.

First of all, my wife writes half my act. I don't know how I could "steal" from my wife.