The 125+ Patton Oswalt Quotes

We're Rewarding Either The Reality Or The Appearance Of Youth, Which Is Why You Have All These People In Their Fifties Trying To Act Like They're Seventeen. You Know, It's Great To Be Young. Be Young. By All Means, Be Young. But Always Remember That Youth Is Also Kinda Dumb, And Doesn't Know A Lot Yet.

The Process Is To Me Is Going Onstage Night After Night After Night After Night Until I Get A New Hour. And Then Once That Hour Is Solidified And Recorded, I Move On.

With A Comedian, It's The Opposite. You Put That Album Out, And They've Heard It. If They're Coming Out To See You, You'd Better Be Doing New Stuff. There's Always A Tiny Part Of The Audience That Want To Hear Certain Bits Of Yours, Or They've Brought Friends To See You, And They've Told Them About Some Of Your Bits. Then Maybe You Should Do Them.

But For The Most Part, For The Majority Of A Stand-up Audience, You Better Have New Stuff They've Not Heard. And If You Put An Album Out, Just Consider That Material Gone. At Least That's How I See It.

I'm Grateful That I Had That Uphill Battle For 10 Years Of Going Onstage And Having Nobody Know Who I Was, Because You Have To Win Them Over.

I Have A Lot Of Friends Who Were Stand-ups, And They Just Stopped After A While, Because They Didn't Like That Battle, Or They Just Couldn't Do It. And Then They Would Get On A Sitcom And Get Visible And Get Back Into It, Because The Audience Was Just Way Easier On Them. But They Lost Those Crucial Years Of Learning To Turn Any Audience Into Your Audience.

What I Was Trying To Say In That Bit, Without Saying It Out Loud, Is That There Were Things - You're Right, Everything Is Very Politicized These Days, Literally Down To What Kind Of Coffee You Drink - That I Used To Fight With People About. And By The Way, Not Just People Like Republicans And Christians, But Liberal Friends Of Mine And Very Radical Left-wing Types, And Alternative, Indie Types.

I'm Such A Bookworm, And I'm Such A People-watcher. It Took The Internet A While To Catch On In Ireland, Because The Culture There Is, You Go To The Pub And Talk To People There, And That's How You Get The News And All The Gossip. You Just Do It Face To Face. And Culturally, You Just Couldn't Understand.

I Grew Up In Such A Featureless, Personality-less Suburb. There Was Nothing To Push Against.

I Think Most Comedians Go Through That (period), Where You Have To Change Or Evolve. You Don't Want To Just Keep Doing Variations On The Same Themes. And, Besides, It Would Look Kinda Creepy For A Guy My Age To Be Doing Stuff That, Like, A 20-year-old Would Do. 'yeah, This Is Bullshit!' It's, Like, 'really? You Don't Have Bigger Concerns At This Point In Your Life?'

I Really Had To Imagine The Kind Of Person That I Would Have Been If I Had Never Left My Hometown... I Don't Think I Would Have Been A Very Pleasant Person.

You Know, In Los Angeles, You're Constantly In Your Car, You're Sealed Up, You're Not Walking Around. Whereas In New York, After A While, All Your Stuff Is Kind Of Public, In One Way Or The Other. I'm Not Saying Either One Of Those Is Bad; They're Both Great For A Very Specific Kind Of Comedian. And I'm Glad That They Both Exist.