Jen Kirkman Quotations

We have to get women's stories out there so a guy will read it, laugh, and think, 'I'm not laughing at a chick story but a story.'

Sitcoms are what got me excited about show business.

I'd love to be a hit in Germany. I'm working on trying to get a gig as David Hasselhoff's opening act.

I love being on the road, but to make a living as a road comic, you have to be on it most weeks out of the year. That's just too much for me. But I would love to be such a successful road comic that I don't have to go on it every week.

I have memories of my grandfather Kirkman making mashed potatoes that were so good because they tasted like a bowl of butter. I love my mom's brownies. My favorite thing about both of those recipes is that someone else made them for me.

I actually like, love, and respect myself, and I try not to take anything too seriously.

Having a child is a lifetime commitment, the biggest one you can possibly make.

Have you ever tried to talk to a baby or a toddler? They never look you square in the eyes, they know about three words, and God forbid they ever ask you how you're doing. It's all about them!

I think some parents think, 'Oh, having kids is so beautiful; I want others to feel the joy I do.'

I want to travel the world and enjoy things, so if you gave me $50 million and said, 'You can never perform again,' I probably would take it and be fine with it.

Parents talk a lot about how much strength and dedication it takes to raise a child. I think it also takes a lot of strength and dedication to carve out a life that doesn't seem normal to anyone else.

Parenthood can be very rewarding, but let's face it, so are margaritas at the adults-only pool.

I still have to work paycheck to paycheck. Being in show business doesn't indicate that you're a 'success,' in my opinion.

Use your passport for domestic trips, so that way you don't risk losing your license.

There are a lot of things I might be good at, such as competitive figure skating, window washing from ten stories up, and being an open heart surgeon. I might also make an excellent Kamikaze pilot - except for the fact that I don't want to learn how to fly and have no interest in taking my own life on behalf of Japan.

What they call 'alt-comedy' now is basically what comedy was like in the '80s. People tried different things, and everybody went to the clubs; there was no other place. Then somehow, the clubs became infiltrated by Dice Clay and Carrot Top types.

Eventually I'm going to be too old to be on camera, and I've been doing stand-up a long time.

Don't overpack your carry-on. You're never going to read that second book or that fourth magazine.

Don't make being a girl or a victim part of your stand-up act. If you encounter sexism in the business, don't bring it on stage; it's not funny.

Couples without kids have each other, their friends, families, and Siri to talk to. It's not like they're quarantining themselves in an underground bunker, never to take a romantic stroll on the beach or attend a Morrissey concert ever again. They're just using birth control.

The women doing comedy do not even think of themselves as 'female' comedians.

People think anything done from a woman's perspective is only going to appeal to women.

Sometimes I feel like if two parents were given $100, and a child-free person was given $100, everyone would assume that the parents would invest their money wisely because they're smart. And people like me would just go buy candy.

As a woman of a certain age - and really, ever since I hit puberty and my baby-making parts were suddenly subject to public debate - I've been told over and over again that I will 'change my mind' about not wanting kids.

A lot of relationships have ended for me in my 20s, because I knew that eventually those people would wanna settle down and have kids.

Asking questions about why I don't want kids is really none of your business, but at least it's a dialogue.

The urge that most people feel to have kids is the exact same as the urge that I have to not have kids. I do not want to raise a child.

I'm very big into just feeling good and doing what I want; I'm not very calculated or thoughtful about my moves.

I'm not a big fan of young people.

Improv requires one thing I lack that I think most mothers need - the basic instinct to put someone else first.

If I write a joke, sometimes people will call it a 'lie,' and I'm fascinated with that.

I'm wildly different than Maria Bamford or Sarah Silverman, and might be more similar to some male comics.

I have this idyllic love life, but my mind just won't accept that. I would like to bring a new guy home every night. I try to make humor out of that situation.

I rarely have out-of-town visitors because you have to do things like take them around L.A.

By the time I started doing stand-up, the club scene had died.

Childfree women are actually great assets to the planet. Our carbon footprint is smaller than a mom's! And we have enough money to write checks to organizations that help kids get vaccinations, vitamins, and educations yet have plenty of free time to advise your daughter that one day she will regret piercing her lip.

My joke is a picture of David Bowie on his balcony in the '70s in a suit in Paris, and unless that's you, I'm not interested. There are very few aesthetic types that I have, and people who look like that are not always necessarily good for me.

If, for some reason, everyone knew who I was without me having to have my own TV show, that's what I would do. That way, I could do less shows a year.

If I could make crazy money just doing stand-up, that's what I would do.

I think that, for me, my favorite thing to do is perform standup onstage. Everything else I do is for the exposure to do more stand-up onstage, and for the money, and for the health insurance.

I wonder if that's the difference between fathers and mothers. I'm friends with people who have kids that are like 5 and under, and they're still in that intense mother-bonding phase. It might just be that. Because the dads haven't changed.

Actually, my friendships are changing because my friends have kids, so that's a new aspect to the material. Not just that I don't want to have kids, it's that I'm having a hard time relating to people I know.

It's much easier to make jokes about not having kids.

I think people with anxiety do different things during different years.

A lot of times that I'm single is not for a lack of anyone being interested; it's me.

Whatever my life looks like, I want it to be real and big and full. I want when, if I get hit by a car, I want to know that I have deep and real friendships, people to visit me in the hospital.

My brain does like the idea of hosting a late-night show. My brain does like the idea of maybe having a show about me. So, I often pitch ideas and work on scripts and do that just because I may not be right about how I feel, so why not just do this, and if it happens and I got my own show, well maybe I would really end up falling in love with it.

I'm really ambitious about is being a really good comic and doing it for the rest of my life and getting really big. Not really famous because I want fame or attention, just a little freedom. So, that's where I'm ambitious.

People said to me, "You know, when you record a special, you're going to regret it. The one thing you'll regret because you're a comic is you'll think of better tags."

At first, there was a separation of clubs and sketch comedy. Now there's all kinds of comedy, making us one big happy family.

I had no idea that marriage was only supposed to be between two people who wanted to get between the sheets and make more people. What ever happened to marrying for love— or to get on your partner’s health insurance policy, or for presents? No one was going to buy two people in their thirties a four-slice toaster if we just continued to live in sin.

I used to make albums because I wasn't touring, and so I thought, "This is the best way for people to find out about me.

I don't have any jokes about my divorce or my ex-husband, who is a lovely person. It really is about how I was an idiot trying to push this guy to get married when I wasn't even sure if I wanted to.

Not that that's my goal, but when you're very wealthy and very famous, you can have a lot more decisions in what you do. You have a lot more opportunity. You can maybe even not work for a few years. It puts you in a great position to make some decisions. You're not always taking every job that comes and that kind of thing.

The whole notion that I don't appeal to the demographic - all my fans are young men. Someone asked me the other day, "So are your shows just full of 40-year-old single women?" I'm like, "I would be rich if that were true."

I really will never understand pushing back on comedians who are like, "I'm like a politician campaigning and shaking hands with these people. They're going to be okay."

I realized that even I have weird intimacy issues with humans - like, I need my friendships to get deeper, I need to be locked in, I need to remember people's names. I know this sounds really stupid, but I just need to be more present in my life.

I have some pretty wonderful friendships, so that's been really good for me. In the past year, I've really worked on that. I think when I was married, I let my friendships go. I think people thought, "Oh, because she's married now, she's so happy all the time." But I really was just isolated in my house.

I have no interest in saying "This is who I am! This is what I'm like!"

I don't know if I don't believe in monogamy. I think I do believe in it depending on the person or situation or something.

I am never home, and it's hard to keep up with things that are good for you to have in life like relationships, whether they be romantic or friendship. I have to work twice as hard to make sure I don't just check out. That's what I mean by vulnerability.

My nana was always a widow as long as I was alive; my grandfather died before I was born. All the women on my street - there were four houses in a row with all old women who lived alone who were widowed. They all had kids, but they were all widowed. My mom didn't put me in preschool; I didn't know that was a thing. I just hung out with these women all day.

I thought that's what happened to women: You live alone when you're old.

What I found out about myself was I am not someone who doesn't believe in marriage.

I don't like to joke about dating.

Admittedly, the masturbation story is just a "Hey, this is one of my best-of's, I'll throw it in the special." But the grandmother stuff, really, I feel like is part of the theme and part of the best way to end the story that I'm telling with the special.

I'm tired of explaining to Hollywood that people would laugh at me, because I go around America making them laugh every week. Nobody would be offended, nobody would think my leather pants are too controversial.

Instead of saving for someone else's college education, I'm currently saving for a luxury retirement community replete with golf carts and handsome young male nurses who love butterscotch.

I am just really focused in on what I love doing, but I would be a moron to not take some of my natural talent - I'm not saying I'm that talented, but I have enough acting and writing talent to go.

Its almost Thanksgiving! A day when you get to hear your extended family use racial slurs for groups are not taking away their jobs.

I don't want to have kids and so I am not going to have kids. People who want kids are going to have kids. I'm doing what I want to do and people who want kids are doing what they want to do. What about this scenario makes me selfish?

I find it actually the height of romance to legally bind yourself to someone because you're really taking care of someone, and letting them take care of you. I actually have no cynicism about that.

I finally understand that it’s okay to be a little afraid of things but that obsessing over them does not mean you have any more control over what you fear.

I realized I need a certain kind of chemistry and a certain kind of look to be into someone, and like 1 percent of the population has it.