Quotes & Jokes by Louis C. K. / page 13

You have to be aware of who you're talking to in an audience.

Credibility lasts about two cycles of bad material, and then you'll probably never get it back. If you let people down, that's really hard to come back from - harder than climbing from nothing to something, even.

When you write from your gut and let the stuff stay flawed and don't let anybody tell you to make it better, it can end up looking like nothing else.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had just five dollars in the bank, but I’ve found that if that’s all you have, you can’t get it out.

Some entertainers don't pay attention to what's going on around them.

I don’t feel those limits when I’m on stage. For some reason, audiences let me get away with things. Remember, it’s all comedy. Words. Thoughts. All thoughts are safe and worth exploring.

I am really tired of looking at my hips. I’m seriously really tired of standing naked in the mirror and staring at my hips for hours and hours while muttering, "You hips. You hips need to get it together."

I just don't trust any of it. Every time I read something about how there's been another ridiculous climb of the Dow Jones, there's a part of me that goes, “This can't be good.” None of this is real money. You know what I mean? It's not like there's actually more of anything. It's just ideas. When people are getting richer and richer but they're not actually producing anything, it can't end well.

Life is full of horrible mistakes.

I'd love to have a shitty job. I couldn't hold any down. Standup was the only thing I could stick with. I'm an idiot that way.

I don't have a brother in real life.

There's no such thing as a cheap laugh.

When you're young as a comic, you don't have a lot of leverage.

It’s been a very old thing for people to gather together and laugh at stuff. The first comedian in America really was Abraham Lincoln. He used to go to a pub near where he lived and stand in front of the fire and he packed the place every night and he would just talk and bust everybody in their guts. He was just a hilarious speaker and that’s what he did.

I've had, what, two years? Probably five good years. Before that I had twenty years of uncertainty and suffering and ego destruction and poverty. All those things. That'll always outweigh the good times.