Quotes & Jokes by Louis C. K. / page 14
I know what it's like to have a bunch of material that's working that you don't care about. You want to die.
I think I'm past any window where I'm suddenly going to become surprisingly ripped so that people go, 'Oh, my God, what happened to you?'
Everybody is different. Some comedy is more musical like Steven Wright. His is a pillar of comedy to me. He invented a whole form and all his jokes are poems. So it's different. I wanted to do it like George Carlin. Now I do it like me.
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.
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 don't know what it's like to be an actor, where if your show gets canceled, really you're just a bum.
A lot of the struggle I had with movies is I really loved moments and tones and feelings in a scene, and I loved creating those, but I never really had great stories to string them together.
I don't have a room full of writers pitching ideas. It's just me out of my head.
The thing is, comedy's gone in a weird direction. People are really into ironic comedy and fakeness and cleverness.
Nice to be here. I had a good day today I went to a movie. Before the movie now they show you that presentation where they explain that you shouldn't download movies on the Internet because you're hurting all the people that work on them. They need to feed their families so you shouldn't download the movies. And I saw this and I thought, "Wow, I had no idea. I didn't know you could download movies on the Internet... I don't care about those people."
When I am in a hotel, and I turn off the lights and the TV, I just freak out. I turn the TV back on and don't get any sleep.
Well, I think "likability" is an overused word. I don’t watch people 'cause I like them; I watch them because they’re compelling. Sympathetic is a little different. Likable just thins you out. Working to make a character likable is what kills most TV shows.
You have to be really tenacious. You have to keep at it. There are many roads to get there. If you can get yourself into Harvard, that’s a good way to go, because every Harvard graduating class, the agencies come trolling around and they’ll look for you. So if you go to Harvard, you’ll get found there.