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If you're showing people where it's smooth sailing, where is the joke? If you go back to any movie, even a conventional movie, with any comedians, they're either not terribly intelligent or they're not doing something well.

I mean, I hate when actors talk about how hard their job is. It's ridiculous, because we have the best job in the world.

I once read that in vaudeville, it was often the straight guy who got paid more than the comic because that's the tougher job. He has to set up the jokes in just the right way.

Describing comic sensibility is near impossible. It's sort of an abstract silliness, that sometimes the joke isn't the star.

Professional comedians, surprisingly, have a lack of humor. They're insensitive to the insanity of our times.

That's the worst way you can hear about comedy material: from a third person's blog story that they wrote when they were upset.

To show that a comedian on stage in India talking about sanitation or in South Africa talking about HIV and AIDS awareness, if you follow the joke into their lives, you can see that, like, oh, these things aren't just contrived in joke books. This is real life. I think the best comedians have that bravery and courage to say, Oh, this is what it is.

A lot of stand-up comedians are actually very insecure, and they come on slightly battling the audience. They want to be the superior person in the room, sneering at the world. That can be very funny. But to me, what's more interesting is that the world is on my shoulders, and it's pushing me down.

The bad thing about being a famous comedian is that every now and then someone approaches me to tell an old joke. Don't tell me jokes - I have that. People also say the weirdest things, sometimes sarcastic things, and even evil things. They like to provoke to get a reaction.