Raising young children offers the highest life purpose
“I understood it in the moment. I absolutely knew this was the best time I'll ever have in my life. No question. Also, I've got to add, it's not just a sense of feeling valued and feeling purposeful, it's entertainment. There's nothing more entertaining than a little kid. So I knew that this could be the best thing you could do. And I still think that way. I wish, you know, it's funny, I left that interview with Mike Birbiglia and I didn't think about that specific quote, but I did think about that section of the interview.”
Action movies provide essential physical wish fulfillment
“It's wish for, let's say, first of all, an evil that is so clear and obvious that it's worthy of our anger, which these movies do, especially the nobody movies. There's a point in both movies where you trip over into James Bond land. And a real guy who's been established and who has tensions and sensitivities and struggles that feel very real. And that's partly because of it's me playing them. And I'm not magically delicious.”
Sketch comedy is the most profound human expression
“I think sketch comedy, I'm sorry to say it, is the most profound expression of human existence. There is. I don't think any Kubrick movie or Freudian analysis or Shakespeare says as much about how humans operate and what is the ultimate problem with us as a species than sketch comedy. And I wish it was not true. I wish the drama, grand drama, I wish that we were worthy of being taken apart and observed in subtle and complex ways. But I don't think so.”
“We gotta keep trying. In the face of what I consider the limitations of being a person, which are strict and seem immutable and there's no way around, so what? We gotta keep trying. I don't know what the future is if we don't hope to try to be better than we are right now. So, yeah, so I do have some wind beneath my wings. A little bit, just a draft. There's a breeze beneath my wings.”
“I just couldn't believe how much these couple of passages expressed this way of living, that had something to do with experiencing time, obviously this term being present. But it took no effort. And how amazing it was. It was really a beautiful way to live in the world. And I knew it would go away, too. This is going to go away a little at a time as I go forward. And I have to try to remember it. I have to try to live this way.”
Wealth provides security but not lasting happiness
“There's no question that the security that you feel from not being afraid of a health issue or housing, whatever, is a great comfort and helps you to be more at peace with life. There's no question it should help you. It's just not as much help as you think it should be. I mean, yes, you can eat steak every night, I guess, but then you get sick of steak.”
Comedy stages are performance spaces, not truth forums
“If you're on that comedy stage, that's a show. You are not you. You are pretending to be a person named you. Everything you say is a construct, everything. If you don't like that and you want to tell an audience something genuine, earnest and honest, then get off that stage, because that stage is only a show. It is not real and it is not genuine and it is not direct, no matter how much you act like it is.”
