Marc Maron

“When I was a young kid I loved Don Rickles, Buddy Hackett and Jackie Vernon.”

“It seems people are more willing to let other people control their minds now and recreational drug use doesn't seem to have that same renegade sense of adventure that it once did.”

“It's easy to maintain your integrity when no one is offering to buy it out.”

“When I was a bit older I had all of the George Carlin records, all of the Steve Martin records, all of the Cheech and Chong records and all of the Richard Pryor records.”

“When you actually meet the devil and he offers you a deal most artists eventually negotiate.”

“We need the children of Indonesia and the Philippines to manufacture our freedom of choice.”

“The demand for standup in the eighties was created by how easy it was to exploit 'comedians' and create very cheap television programming.”

“There are also always those burnt, hard kernels at the bottom that don't pop. You know why they don't pop? They don't pop because they have integrity.”

“He doesn't have anything like wisdom of age or hindsight. He's a biased historian of self, an emotional revisionist. We all are, for the most part.”

“Everyone is a little bitter. We're born bitter. The personality itself is really just a very complex defense mechanism. A reaction to the first time someone said, "No you can't.”

“Some of you may be perfectly happy with mediocrity. Some of you will get nothing but heartbreak. Some of you will be heralded as geniuses and become huge. Of course, all of you think that one describes you...hence the delusion necessary to push on.”

“People want to share but they usually don’t. People don’t talk to each other about real things because they’re afraid of how they’ll be judged. Or they think other people don’t have the capacity to carry the burden of what they have to say. They see the compulsion to put that burden out in the world as a show of weakness. But all that stuff is what makes us human; more than that, it’s what makes being human interesting and funny. How we got away from that, I don’t know. But fuck that: We’re built to deal with shit. We’re built to deal with death, disease, failure, struggle, heartbreak, problems. It’s what separates us from the animals and why we envy and love animals so much. We’re aware of it all and have to process it. The way we each handle being human is where all the good stories, jokes, art, wisdom, revelations, and bullshit come from.”

“I think that standup has always been an acquired taste and there was always only a handful of performers that were really inspired.”

“Have you ever had one of those moments when you look up and realize that you're one of those people you see on the train talking to themselves?”

“Left wing, right wing, I am wingless and tired of trying to fly. Here comes the ground.”

“It may have lost its special-ness forever and the clubs might not being doing well but I think standup is in the best shape it has been in a long time.”

“I'm sad to see the passing of the great drug warriors. I certainly did my part in that battle and I don't regret any of it.”

“Jerusalem Syndrome is actually a rare psychological condition that occurs to some visitors to the Middle East. They get to Israel and just snap.”

“Hopefully standup will become special again.”

“I was also a big Woody Allen fan. When I got into college I listened to Lenny Bruce but it's taken me years to put him into context historically and really get what he did.”