Paul Provenza Quotes

#1. We look at the ancient Greeks with their gods on a mountain top throwing lightning bolts and say, 'Those ancient Greeks. They were so silly. So primitive and naive. Not like our religions. We have burning bushes talking to people and guys walking on water. We're ... sophisticated.'

Paul Provenza

#2. Really, while gas is an awful thing to watch - the death is painful - to even watch these deaths - it's also bad to die from a bullet, a hand grenade, or a machete.

Rand Paul

#3. I know jazz is completely un-American. But the reason why America doesn't like it is because it's not funny. We [americans] have made jazz funny.

Paul Provenza

#4. Some performers are brilliant comedians, some are genius musicians, and some just make you happy to be alive. THE BOBS are all of that - and then some.

Paul Provenza

#5. George Carlin maintained that anything and everything is funny given the right context. This context also includes your own history with a given group. What I can get away with and where I can go is not a problem with my audience because they know me.

Paul Provenza

#6. When I was a young comic just starting out, I was very cautious, as I didn't want to alienate people. George Carlin's bravery became a benchmark. I became perfectly fine with alienating some people in the audience. That just comes with the territory.

Paul Provenza

#7. I believe that the truest parts of people can be buried, and for many different reasons.

Mary Gaitskill

#8. Comedy is inherently subversive because it turns the normal reality on its head. The art form is all about these questions and contradictions. In comedy, we're dealing with language that we all understand, but words can have a dozen other things around them that alter or affect meaning.

Paul Provenza

#9. Career is a mindset. The wrong mindset. Career is linear. Especially when you are trapped in the TV or film world. The next thing you do has always got to be bigger, or it is perceived as a failure.

Paul Provenza

#10. We didn't choose the joke because it's filthy! We chose it because of the structure!

Paul Provenza

#11. There is no pulse so sure of the state of a nation as its characteristic art product which has nothing to do with its material life.

Gertrude Stein

#12. I'm off at least three or four days a week, so it's a perfect job, really.

James Denton

#13. Social media allows comics to bypass the gatekeepers and connect directly with people who will want to come see them.

Paul Provenza

#14. How many impressionist painters painted the same damned thing? How many actors have played the same part in renditions of a play or dancers do the same dances,

Paul Provenza

#15. Life was only a dream, and all dreams had to end. Aiel

Robert Jordan

#16. I actually go to church. I know it's hard for you to believe. It's only because you know that Jesus on the cross? I love his smooth hairless body.

Paul Provenza

#17. If I had the flag that Betsy Ross worked so hard on, I wouldn't destroy it. I'd put it up on EBay because it's gotta be worth some serious coin. And that is the American way.

Paul Provenza

#18. As a comedian, I'm like one of those on-the-scene reporters. I will actually go and try to find disasters so I can write jokes as the disasters unfold.

Paul Provenza

#19. I must stop him from being one of those who call themselves good because they have no claws.

Irvin D. Yalom

#20. Badgered, snubbed and scolded on the one hand; petted, flattered and indulged on the other-it is astonishing how many children work their way up to an honest manhood in spite of parents and friends. Human nature has an element of great toughness in it.

Henry Ward Beecher

#21. There is no democrats or republicans, right or left, red state or blue state. We are all one. And we are all unified against Mexicans.

Paul Provenza

#22. I actually had to leave the country for infractions to fall off my record.

Paul Provenza

#23. Children in a third world country. That's how we spread democracy.

Paul Provenza

#24. The people who decided in their wisdom that we're all going to go over to ebooks, they are not readers. These are technical people. These are people who think that somehow this is progress. It isn't. It's regressive.

Jeanette Winterson