You get to the end of something, you're laughing, you're like, 'That's funny, and that's funny,' and then you get to the end, and the credits come down, and you're like, 'That's it?! That's the whole thing?! You had me here for that?!' I just don't want to do that.
There are comedians who focus on everything that is external. They focus on politics and the news, what's going on in that city and that night.
I was a screenwriting major at Georgetown, and I was in class with some really strong writers like Jonathan Nolan, who co-wrote 'The Dark Knight' with Chris, his brother. He wrote 'The Prestige,' the story for 'Memento.'
I've become good friends with Lena Dunham, and the thing I had in common with Lena when I was 24 is I was as ambitious as she was. What we don't have in common is that I was not as talented. My voice was not as clearly defined.
I got out of school in 2000, and I always wanted to be on 'This American Life,' since I first started telling stories. And that, I mean, that show is a little bit of a fortress. It's really hard to get stuff on that show.
I am intimidating no one in America. No one feels like they are below me in any way. They feel like they are absolutely either at or above my level and 100-percent comfortable talking to me.
Sometimes my fans are too nice.
I always live tweet 'SNL.'
I find my fans are really funny people. Most comedians can't say that about their fans.
In terms of comedy, there was a Seinfeldian era of comedy that I love but got played out. Seinfeld was great, but then after him it was people acting like Seinfeld and making observations that we felt like we'd kind of heard before, and then you're seeing Seinfeldian comedy in commercials. Suddenly everything is observational funniness.
Once you know how to make a movie, you can't not make a movie.
You can't go to medical school and come out and be like, 'I'm going to be a dog catcher.' That would be so pointless.
It's interesting how sleepwalking in a certain way becomes an accumulation of your outside stimuli that's actually there and what's happening in your brain.
I think that my regrets mostly have to do with my relationship with my ex-girlfriend. Every once in a while, you get those flashback memories of conversations you had with your exes, and you just, like, wince when you're walking down the street. Something occurs to you, 'Oh, no, I said that.'
What I always studied in screenwriting from my mentor John Glavin was that the most interesting characters are characters with shades of gray.
The list of fun and easily-fixed brain diseases is very short.
Fortunately, I don't talk about politics on stage.
When you're in high school, you can't even imagine the concept of what the rest of your life even means.
In real life, I first started sleep walking in high school because that was when this concept of getting into college first appeared. I had this moment of, 'Oh! This is going to affect the rest of my life.'
Nothing that you want ever is what you think it is.
