Maron's Quotes

#1. Marc Maron's podcast success has nothing to do with my podcast success. If I do a quarter of a million downloads, I can show that to an advertiser as a fact, and that's that.

Jay Mohr

#2. But then again, what do I know. I project. Then I judge.

Marc Maron

#3. Because we're comics and we pass each other on campus, we know of each other, and a lot of the time there's a mutual respect there.

Marc Maron

#4. I know that the podcast is typically something I can do forever, because it's mine; it's just me and my producer and business partner, so it's our business.

Marc Maron

#5. My dad is actually a manic depressive, which is very exciting half the time.

Marc Maron

#6. You get all excited to give her the ring, and it's real emotional, and you give it to her, and she cries. And a second later, you're like, 'Damn, I could have had a car.'

Marc Maron

#7. There's nothing more horrifying than the possibility or the idea that you will just fade away into obscurity.

Marc Maron

#8. If you let someone talk for an hour, you're gonna have a pretty good idea of who they are, and I think that's more rewarding than me sitting there going, "That's complete bullshit about health care."

Marc Maron

#9. I feel bad for people who have never been addicted to anything, because they're the real losers. You want to know why? Because they don't know what it's like to really want something - and then get it again and again and again.

Marc Maron

#10. There is a weird truth to the idea that if you really don't care, things will generally go your way. If you're really invested and emotionally attached, things will get away from you or at least get chaotic and scary.

Marc Maron

#11. I think things evolve into jokes. I don't generally write them down as jokes. I talk them out.

Marc Maron

#12. Get yourself in a situation where you have no choice.

Marc Maron

#13. I'm just looking for authentic engagement of some kind, and usually, after an hour or more, you get that. Some people talk at you. Some people just want to answer questions, but a lot of times, all of a sudden you drift away, and you don't remember you're on the mic, and you're in something real.

Marc Maron

#14. It's not all about love. That's half of it ... The other half is about that moment you have with yourself when you're looking in the mirror, and you just go, 'Oh man. I'm going to compromise my dreams, get fat, sick, old and die someday. I kind of want to have someone around for that.'

Marc Maron

#15. They used to have a smoking section at most airports. No more. They now have these glass-encased rooms. You're not just a smoker, you're an example to other people. You're an exhibit at a futuristic zoo.

Marc Maron

#16. I've become less angry and a little more humble by age and by experience and by going through the ups and downs of life.

Marc Maron

#17. Comics seemed to have a handle on things. They could sort of disarm and get control over reality. I found it very comforting to laugh.

Marc Maron

#18. I didn't really want to kill myself, it just made me feel better to know I could if I wanted to.

Marc Maron

#19. I have a very primitive sense that if I just turn on a radio or the television, that somebody's playing that stuff for me.

Marc Maron

#20. In our interview, Conan said something about the secret of his success: "Get yourself in a situation where you have no choice." And that's what I'm doing, because I had no choice.

Marc Maron

#21. Dogs are too much to handle. I don't need anything in my house that's needier than me.

Marc Maron

#22. The medium of podcasting and the personal nature of it, the relationship you build with your listeners and the relationship they have with you - they could be just sitting there, chuckling and listening ... there's nothing like that.

Marc Maron

#23. I seem to offend everybody. I just never got into the universe. I don't seem to have a tremendous amount of discipline or patience with having to follow a story that is really multi-leveled and science-fiction.

Marc Maron

#24. When you're young you really think you're angry for reasons and causes. As you get older, you realize you might just be angry.

Marc Maron

#25. I'm not fundamentally a writer. I know writers, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for them. It bothers me that no matter how well I do it, it's not really my format.

Marc Maron

#26. We live in an age where people are like, "I'd love to catch up. Maybe text me later? But don't call because I don't really listen to my messages. But if you text me ... " We've displaced interaction into sound bites and untethered phrases and sentences that come up on the phone as Twitter feed.

Marc Maron

#27. We live in a culture where people are self-centered and careerist and everybody seems to think they have too much on their plate or they just don't have time for other people's pain.

Marc Maron

#28. That's an animal fable about humility. If you survive your mistake, you must learn from it. Accept that you're fragile, vulnerable, and sometimes stupid. Realize that you're not immortal and you've got to take care of yourself. And then laugh it off and fly away.

Marc Maron

#29. Any comic can get on the radio show and be funny. You can get that on any morning radio show or afternoon radio show. There are plenty of people who do that. It's not a difficult format, to sit around with two or three comics and be funny.

Marc Maron

#30. Art is supposed to punch you in the brain, and it's supposed to stay punched.

Marc Maron

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

Marc Maron

#32. [ ... ] I'm about to get on a plane here, and I'm packing recovery literature. All I know is I'm going to be the guy reading the book on co-dependency. That's what I know about me.

Marc Maron

#33. There's a fine line between cultural criticism and bitterness.

Marc Maron

#34. How complicated can ice cream flavors be? How much can you put in there? I mean, when the flavor's something like banana ice cream with caramel, fudge chunks, cheddar goldfish and pennies - you've got to draw a line there.

Marc Maron

#35. It always astounds me that over the course of my career, and having lived in four comedy cities - New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Los Angeles - there's very few people I haven't run into.

Marc Maron

#36. I guess we can start at the end but it's really the middle. Let's just call it the really bad part. My second wife, Mishna, brought it to my attention that I had an anger problem. She didn't say it like that. What she said was, "I'm leaving." Then she took her vagina and left.

Marc Maron

#37. I think seeing Pryor's first movie, Live In Concert, when I was in high school changed my life. Pryor really put the heart in darkness for me.

Marc Maron

#38. She had that strange mutant beauty that models have. It's the kind of beauty that no matter what they are wearing or how they try to hide themselves, a sharply defined, electric appeal comes through and zaps your desire.

Marc Maron

#39. I believe in God ... just in case. It's like there's some list somewhere and you don't want to be on it. I don't want to say THERE'S NO GOD! and then die and say, Oh, Hi ... Is there some kind of community service I can do?

Marc Maron

#40. In this vivid depiction of the wiseguys and poor sods who drift through his flawed hero's bar, Con Lehane also shows us their modest hopes and dreams ... There are no easy solutions in McNulty's world.

Margaret Maron

#41. I think sharing experience makes everything better. When people get talking about how they've overcome something or how they haven't, it's nourishing.

Marc Maron

#42. 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.

Marc Maron

#43. There's something about cats' self-sufficiency and their seemingly individualistic ways that I find compelling.

Marc Maron

#44. I was thinking about how temporary disappointment can be if you don't linger on it too long and how there are beautiful things in the world if you look. It's up to you to find them for yourself.

Marc Maron

#45. I remember seeing Richard Pryor's first movie; it was a midnight movie when I was in high school. I must have been about fifteen. It was one of the most cathartic experiences of my life. I'd never laughed that much.

Marc Maron

#46. Some people don't even realize they're bitter. If you don't know whether you are or not, here's a quick quiz you can give yourself. If you ever wake up in the morning and the first thing you say is "Oh, fuck, not again," you might be a little bitter.

Marc Maron

#47. It's great to have people come out. I do worry, though. They know me very intimately, in a way, if they listen to my show; they know a lot about me.

Marc Maron

#48. I'm not a moron, but science fiction to me requires a suspension of disbelief and honest curiosity or fascination in that kind of bullshit. I've just never been able to make that jump, really. I like things to be more organic.

Marc Maron

#49. I'm happy, certainly, given the times we're living in, to be doing OK, and to not be worrying about money, and to be producing something I enjoy.

Marc Maron

#50. There are a lot of things that I'm allowing myself to be, but it's a conscious effort to experience contentment for me. My brain doesn't do that naturally. I'm very overwhelmed all of the time.

Marc Maron

#51. If you can't afford the good food or if you can't afford health care or if you don't have a job or if your car is dangerous because you can't get it fixed and you DIE, you just lost the game-bzzzzz-thanks for playing extreme capitalism.

Marc Maron

#52. When you commit your life to something and it doesn't work out, it is a tough place to be. Suicide can be the spiritual reprieve of a faithless person. I knew I could always just end it, and there was solace in that.

Marc Maron

#53. We need the children of Indonesia and the Philippines to manufacture our freedom of choice.

Marc Maron

#54. It's amazing how much you can rationalize when you're on drugs. I could actually say to myself, Look, I'm only doing blow Wednesday through Saturday.

Marc Maron

#55. I think the reason Jesus is so popular, just on a celebrity level, is that he died at the peak of his career.

Marc Maron

#56. Well, evolution's just a theory.' And, I'm thinking to myself, 'Well, thank goodness gravity's a law.'

Marc Maron

#57. I'm proud to be part of a generation where reading is a 'look.'

Marc Maron

#58. Maybe depression is the most reasonable response to all the crap around us. Maybe it's the happy people who need medication.

Marc Maron

#59. Let's be honest, this is a consumer based economy in America. That's all we manufacture here is need and appetite. We are the world's mouth. They make things in other countries, and they're like, 'Send it to America; they'll eat it.'

Marc Maron

#60. The way I figure it, if you can't tell I'm high by looking at me, I win.

Marc Maron

#61. What appealed to me was the intimacy of the medium, the fact that I was doing it from my home, and the fact that I wanted to talk. I was not there to plug things. I don't do a hell of a lot of research. I go on a sort of kindred-spirit bonding that preexists the interview, and just see what unfolds.

Marc Maron

#62. I'm just saying, 'Hey, throw me a bone. How about a smile, cute t-shirt? Look at me.' Nothing - unless it's a turn to their friends to go, 'Hey, why is that weird guy looking at us?'

Marc Maron

#63. The worst thing about living in this world, in general, is that things get overwhelming, and things cause a tremendous amount of despair and anxiety.

Marc Maron

#64. My favorite part is being engaged with somebody's story and life, and getting a laugh with people I have a tremendous amount of respect for or not, and being challenged by the immediacy of conversation.

Marc Maron

#65. Buying my wife a gun sort of like me saying, ' You know, I kinda want to kill myself, but I want it to be a surprise'.

Marc Maron

#66. God, I'm a girl with a cursed fate. I've fallen in love with a boy and I want to be happy.

Arina Tanemura

#67. I don't seek controversy. I don't seek to antagonize. Sometimes it happens, but I'm not there to argue politics.

Marc Maron

#68. Show business is one of the few businesses that the devil will actually agree to own just a portion of your soul because he knows if you have a performer's ego you were probably working for him all along.

Marc Maron

#69. You hope to see an arc of growth in your ability to become a character on television.

Marc Maron

#70. People who have babies tell me I will know a love that is beyond anything I can imagine, and a joy that is indescribable. Love and joy? That sounds horrifying. I have no way of knowing whether I can handle either of those. I'm much better with need and fear. They are what ground me.

Marc Maron

#71. I found a great deal of relief and excitement watching comics when I was very young. My grandmother was very into them and so was my grandfather. They had a profound effect on me, so I just found myself watching comedians on the after-school shows: Merv Griffin and that kind of stuff.

Marc Maron

#72. You can't avoid pain in life. It's how you handle pain, that's what defines you.

Marc Maron

#73. I'm just very sort of compulsive and lack the ability to keep things in perspective. If I'm not writing or playing guitar or on the microphone or out on the road, I'm cleaning pots and pans or freaking out about some plumbing issue or tweeting.

Marc Maron

#74. Every time we start thinking we're the center of the universe, the universe turns around and says with a slightly distracted air, 'I'm sorry. What'd you say your name was again?

Margaret Maron

#75. There's something to be said that if everyone likes something there's gotta be something fucking wrong with it on some level. Unless it's ice cream.

Marc Maron

#76. When you hear the things that people have gone through and realize you've gone through the same, it provides an amazing amount of relief. It gives us hope. And I think that's what we're supposed to get from each other. The

Marc Maron

#77. I didn't know what to do. I'm in love with this woman, I'm married to this other woman, and I'm in trouble, so I call my two friends. That's all I need, two. I need the main guy and the guy I go to when I drain the main guy.

Marc Maron

#78. For 15 years of my life I smoked, I drank, I used to do drugs ... but during that time, I never once thought I was going to die. But the second I set foot on a stairmaster -the second- I am sure my heart is gonna explode and blood is gonna spray out of my nose.

Marc Maron

#79. 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.

Marc Maron

#80. I immediately went out and bought a book on anger management. And now I have that book, and I don't know if I'll get to the book. But I'm certainly excited about the day where I can't find the book, and I get to say, 'Where the hell is my anger management book?!'

Marc Maron

#81. 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.

Marc Maron

#82. 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.

Marc Maron

#83. I'm weird; I have a very strange emotional memory. I really somehow hold on to even passing moments with people.

Marc Maron

#84. I don't make a list of questions. Ever. I think a lot of my interviews are driven by my need to feel connection.

Marc Maron

#85. 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.

Marc Maron

#86. 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?

Marc Maron

#87. When you're a kid, you always feel you have this weird kindred-spirit thing with other Jews, until you get older and you realize it's just middle-class bourgeois Jews that sort of fit a template that your family fits into one way or another.

Marc Maron

#88. A woman's body doesn't quit just because her heart breaks.

Margaret Maron

#89. The truth is, for however much my stories come out of things that have happened to me, they're not darkly or as deeply personal as someone like Marc Maron or a lot of comedians, but they are essentially my life and my interpretation of it.

Eugene Mirman

#90. I sort of get tired of myself sometimes. When you're busy, your life becomes relatively small. But I never get tired of talking to other people.

Marc Maron

#91. That's the big challenge of life - to chisel disappointment into wisdom so people respect you and you don't annoy your friends with your whining.

Marc Maron

#92. I find that if I don't do interviews, I get a little squirrely. I think that when you engage with someone else, or when you engage in something you're passionate about, you're sort of out of your own head.

Marc Maron

#93. My cats, the ones that I have, were feral when I found them so the relationship that I have with them 10 years in is very mutual, earned, and evolved over time. It was never an easy thing. I like that they have a certain distance and have their own sense of selves.

Marc Maron

#94. Jokes do finish themselves. I really do see them as ongoing conversations about personal themes that I ruminate on.

Marc Maron

#95. If you have a handlebar mustache, that is pretty much all you are. You are a delivery system for a handlebar mustache.

Marc Maron

#96. I don't care what anybody says, I think that George Bush is absolutely the right president to oversea the end of the world.

Marc Maron

#97. The truth is, I can't read anything with any distance. Every book is a self-help book to me. Just having them makes me feel better.

Marc Maron

#98. I don't really compartmentalize well. I'm in a state of anxiety and panic a lot, but it's for different reasons. It used to be because I had nothing going on, but I work very hard and there doesn't seem to be an end to it.

Marc Maron

#99. It can take twenty years to create an overnight success but what you don't hear is that that is the exact same amount of time it takes to create a bitter failure.

Marc Maron

#100. I think most other comics are like, "I'm going to do my fkin' act and that'll be that." With me, it's like, "What if I forget my jokes? What if I can't pull it together? This is going to be a fking disaster!"

Marc Maron