Ari Shaffir

“Very rarely are you going to see a story about a comic winning a fight. Yeah we're all degenerates in some way and we're all awful people, so we just show our weaknesses.”

“You just gotta record stuff and move on and make new material. Painters don't wait until they're in some specific gallery before they move on to the next painting.”

“Failing is part of my process. A new bit never works the first time. I figure I have to bomb 7 times to make it good. So I tweak it.”

“One thing I hate in ethnic comedy is giving the audience the opportunity to laugh in a racist way at a thing. A lot of times dwarf comedians will do that, Arab comics, and gay comics will do it; everyone is laughing, but they're not laughing at the joke, they're laughing at this crazy character.”

“I genuinely like haggis. Everybody told me I was supposed to hate it, but I really did enjoy it.”

“It's not like I have campaigns, I don't want to be an activist or anything.”

“Laughs, just laughs. It's the only motivation of a comic.”

“My CD, my first release, was at the Comedy Works in Denver, one of the best clubs in the country.”

“I love gummy bears, pretzels of all kinds, popcorn, Doritos - those are all healthy snacks.”

“Sometimes I start off shows by explaining to people that it's just a bunch of stories - I always say 'It's like standup, just less funny.'”

“Figure out a way to get back onstage because once you do it a few times you'll get over it. Unless it's like a clinical thing. I don't know about clinical like stage fright, that might be worse than what I'm talking about. But if it's normal stage fright get over it.”

“I'll just walk around New York and watch people on the streets.”

“I lived with my parents until I was 25.”

“I get lost a lot.”

“I'm like an overgrown child! I don't know how to do anything!”

“Everyone in L.A. talks about getting an agent or a manager in terms of getting on a sitcom or getting on a movie or doing something else.”

“At The Comedy Store, night after night, the crowds are fuller. It used to be Tuesday at 9 you'd have to start with six people. Now you come in on Tuesdays and it's 100-plus people and you're like, 'Really? On a Tuesday?'”

“When people tell me to do a clean show, I'm like, 'Guys, I don't even understand your thoughts anymore.' What, you can't say a curse word? Nobody thinks that way!”

“I'm just a weird mix of immature and intelligent and I like to share my point of view and who I am.”

“Being Orthodox Jewish is kind of like being raised on like network sitcoms.”