Hal Sparks Art Quotations

Vegas has the Whitman's Sampler of audiences. They come from all different places, so you have to do some crowd psychology. You have to find the heartbeat of the room. It doesn't shift my jokes, but it shifts my timing and my attention.

All musicians need a day job in the beginning. Unless they still live with their parents, I guess. I'm just lucky that my day job is simply another form of art.

Other kids would sneak out of the house to go to parties and do untoward things. I was sneaking out to do standup downtown. It paid off.

People think that the arts are optional and they aren't. They teach a level of emotional depth that's equally important to mathematic skill. You can replace some math skills with a calculator if you know how to operate the thing, but there's no calculator for human interaction.

The pop musicians often leave meaning in the dust and substitute it for cartoons. The deeper artists - the grunge artists in the world and the emoticon people - tend to leave all of the happiness out of life like it just doesn't exist.