Jim Gaffigan Quotations

Why would a lazy guy become a parent of five? Then again, why would creative people who inherently don't like change and criticism become writers, actors, or comedians? There's something about this process. I joke about it: My kids have made me a better person, and I only need, like, 34 more of them to be a really good guy.

As a dad, you are the Vice President of the executive branch of parenting. It doesn't matter what your personality is like, you will always be Al Gore to your wife's Bill Clinton. She feels the pain and you are the annoying nerd telling them to turn off the lights.

I'm a comedian, which is the opposite of a lifestyle that equips you to be a parent.

I initially signed up for Twitter just to do jokes I wasn't going to do in my stand-up routine.

Comics write to their point of view. If you're an exceedingly irreverent comedian, you've got to see where that point of view fits or produces the most funny.

You know what it's like having five kids? Imagine you're drowning. And someone hands you a baby.

Steakhouses sort of have this old-school nature to them; they're like museums full of good food. It's fun hearing the waiter share his expertise on the different cuts of beef and how they're going to cut up your baked potato.

I try to only eat animals that are vegan. I'm probably the opposite of a vegan.

Babies should be classified as an antidepressant. It's pretty hard to be in a bad mood around a 5-month-old baby.

I'm from Indiana. I know what you're thinking, Indiana... Mafia. But in Indiana it's not like New York where everyone's like, 'We're from New York and we're the best' or 'We're from Texas and we like things big' it's more like 'We're from Indiana and we're gonna move.'

Most single guys I know think fatherhood is terrifying.

Manhattan's probably one of the bluest parts in the country, and Indiana's definitely one of the redder states. I have sympathy for both sides.

Comedians kind of write what comes to them. You can give yourself little assignments, but it's what inspires you.

Ever read a book that changed your life? Me neither.

I'm an eccentric, silly, observational guy, but I'm not gonna frighten off social conservatives.

My whole comic persona is that of a guy who explores the id: I romanticize gluttony, I romanticize laziness, and people identify with that.

There's something about being a parent that has, I think, made me a better comedian.

All I want to do is be a good dad, but I'm pretty bad at it.

I always imagine that if I met Dr. Seuss, he would be very similar to Crispin Glover.

I just want to be known as funny.

I've always wanted to be an actor. I've never planned on the acting and the stand-up feeding each other; they've always been separate desires.

No one goes into standup to make money. The frustration and rejection are just too much.

I'm a big eater. I mean, a lot of my stand-up is about food, and you write about what you know, and that's the only thing I know. I don't know anything else.

When people look and decide they have nothing in common with me - I'm 43, balding, blond, whatever - there's something absolutely invigorating about winning them over. Even if it's eight people from Sweden who don't understand what I'm talking about.

I don't know, I find that honestly, the stand-up thing in some ways is a little bit of a cliche to carry around, because people don't consider stand-ups really actors.

I worked on 'USA Today' as a topic for while. I tried to do something on hand chairs, chairs that look like hands. I really tried. But some topics are not truly universal.

It does piss me off when Angelina won't stop calling.

I love the movie previews... you know... Why is it whenever you're watching a movie preview you always feel like you have to comment on it to the person you're with? 'Yeah... I'm not gonna see that movie. I'm gonna wait for that on VIDEO.' I mean when you think about it, it's just a commercial for the movie. You know, you never sit at home watching tv-- "Yeah... I'm not buying that cereal. I don't like cereals with raisins in 'em. ...What's your take on that commercial? Where you goin'?

I always want my standup act to appeal to everybody in the room, and when I started standup, and I would see people talk about their kids and their wife, and I'd always cringe a little bit, like, 'I can't get a date, I don't know what you're talking about.'

I like bowling. It's just one of those things where I can do so many jokes about it because I do know bowling. Somebody once said, "The whitest things in the world are Jim Gaffigan and bowling."

I'm definitely hesitant wearing shorts during the summer. Like for a pale person, you know, summer - everyone in the world is so excited for summer, but pale people, we're just like, oh no.

There are people that are vegetarians that love bacon.

If someone picks up one thing you've written, you want them to go, 'Wow, this is pretty good.'

I believe that comedians do what they do, and then they get credit or criticism for doing it. There's nothing planned about this.

There are some people who know who I am but there are a lot of people that have no idea who I am - which is not to say that that's a bad thing.

I'm a guy who comes from a small town in the Midwest. It's not in my nature to say the most explicit things in public.

I'm not a foodie; I'm an eatie. I don't have anything against foodies. I just don't have the time or the interest to do that much research.

In stand up, you get an awareness of how you come across, but in acting there is almost a hyper-awareness on how you might be physically perceived.

We tend to outdo ourselves.

As I go on in standup, I keep being described as cleaner and cleaner as I do each hour, they're like, 'It's unbelievable how clean,' 'He's the cleanest person in the world.' And then I'll do shows and people will be like, 'You're supposed to be so clean, but you're talking about cancer.'

I was able to make the jump to theaters without having a TV show. My passion for getting a TV show just plummeted. It was like I had already achieved what I wanted to achieve.

The whole idea of celebrity is flattering - it helps you get into restaurants and stuff - but once you obtain some creative fulfillment, which you do on a nightly basis as a comedian, it's hard to give that up just to be the wacky neighbor on a show.

I should clarify that anyone that goes onstage and makes strangers laugh is insane. So I am insane.

A lot of people are like, "You're doing commercials?" And I honestly feel like those Sierra Mist commercials are better than a lot of sitcoms I get offered. It's hard work, and I'm paid a lot of money, and I do it because I love the soda.

There's a certain balance between finding an opportunity to do what you really enjoy and getting caught up in the flattery of people wanting you to do things.

I didn't choose to be the guy who talks about the mundane - it's just who I am and it's what kind of works for me.

I wish, in some ways, I was the type of comedian who could do something blistering and topical, but I'm the guy who gets stuck in the revolving door and thinks I should write about that.

I think comedians get too much credit or too much criticism for the style of comedy they do, and they generally do the style of comedy that works for them. There's no kind of shrewd calculation going into the type of standup we all do. It's like David Cross is supposed to be doing the David Cross' type of standup.

It's a balancing act of you feel horrible that you're away but there is something about the road that is rather liberating.

I don't want to be a TV star for the sake of being on TV. I want to have a TV show that's based around my comedy.

It took me a long time to understand not to get caught up in other people's expectations. It really comes down to creative fulfillment. It took me a while to realize I don't want to just be on a show to be on a show.

Comedy is a very lucrative business now, but when everyone first went into it, it didn't make sense from a financial standpoint.

I personally have no interest in being a star or a celebrity. I want my stand-up comedy and how I think as a comedian to be recognized and successful.

I kind of consider myself... I mean, I try to have my comedy be accessible, and if people are paying $30 to see me in a theater and they want to have their picture taken with me, it's not the end of the world. It's one of those things, where I'm not the only comic who does it. A lot of comics do it. If I'm doing a 4,000-seat venue, it might be a little bit of a different task, but it's all good.

For a comedian to kind of catch onto something right as something's catching on in our culture, a lot of it is luck, and you hope the joke is funny.

Television's very much a writer's medium, as it probably should be, but if you're not the writer, then as the performer, you defer to that. It's just kind of how it's constructed. Is there some leeway? Yeah. But I also don't want to come across as a jerk.

I'm kind of like a guy who's missing a little bit of the guy gene. Like, I love steak, but the notion of golfing is the last thing I would want to do. I love women, but I'm also a mama's boy, and some of my best friends are women. So I'm kinda half guy's guy.

Twitter allowed me to talk about parenting in short snippets and find out what I really wanted to say about it, which is that I'm a dad who had no idea what he's doing.

I don't have any delusions. I'm not a novelist - I'm a comedian who writes. I love doing the stand-up and the touring and the albums and all that, but it's pretty amazing to go into a library and see your book there.

Whatever a writer gets paid for his book, it's never enough. I think that's true. It's hard work. But in the end, you wrote a book. It's something real and tangible that sits on a shelf forever.

I think it's important to control your opportunities, because in the entertainment world, it's not up to you. I'm not sitting here under this naïve belief that someone in Hollywood is going, "Gaffigan! What kind of a show can I build around him?" So you have to find things that can showcase your point of view.

I'm much more interested in making people laugh than getting applause breaks.

What's amazing about doing movies, compared to television, there's an ending you can see. There's an enthusiasm to it.

I always seem to be chosen to do very flattering things like the beard comb over or go to the bathroom with the door open on Sex and the City or be the guy people meow at in Super Troopers. It's great for self esteem.

There are a lot of good looking men on this planet. It seems like once a week someone will tell me, "I know someone who looks like you" and I don't know what say to them except, "Tell them hi."

I definitely write about things that are universal, that everyone can identify with. You're supposed to write about things you're passionate about and I guess I am a foodie. I do love food and it's kind of like I'm an eccentric observationalist guy. To make it kind of universal, I try a lot of different things. When I first started writing this, I was like, 'No food.' Then, you know, it just always goes there.

I'm there to make people laugh. I'm not trying to come across as sexy.

The whole idea of comedy, there is nothing normal about going up on stage to make strangers laugh. But I'm also not an exhibitionist like other comics. I'm not up there talking about masturbating.

I was the youngest of the six kids, and to make my older siblings laugh, that was very important. I did a great impression of our dad that made them all laugh, so that gave me a lot of power within the family.

I don't think comedians make an active decision to be a certain "persona." Comedians write the way they're going to write.

If I was on an airplane, the people in coach would know who I am. But no one in first class would know.

My comedy is romanticized laziness.

It's weird, I love acting and stand-up is a very unique, solitary thing where you are the writer, performer and director. But acting is incredibly rewarding, working and interacting with people to create funny moments. I can't imagine not doing acting or stand-up, I really enjoy both of them that much.

I was always told that Hoosier came from when settlers in the state, when a stranger came on their property they'd say, "Who's there? Who's there?" So people that were from Indiana were the people that said "Who's there?" But what do I know? I don't read or interact with people outside the Internet.

I spend way too much time on Facebook and MySpace to feel too uncomfortable at this. I like to think of the Internet as an effective way to waste time and time.

I do Sierra Mist commercials not because they pay me a lot of money or because it only takes a couple of days. I do it because I have a respect for all sodas and I like to communicate that. Some people say soda, some people say pop, where I'm from in Indiana they called it breakfast.

I've been doing stand-up for so long, I think 19 years, that I love topics I can also expand on. Once I identify a topic like, say, seafood, which is a big one right now, it's like there are different kinds of tangents I can go on to build a larger chunk.

I think I have a lot of voices in my head and I guess my inner critic is a female.

I don't know if I'm the husky guy, but I'm the sexy guy who's a good kisser .

The entertainment business is such a strange, crazy perception business that you're either given way too much respect, like people saying, "You should be the head of the sitcom!" Or you're given no respect, where they're like, "You should audition to be the garbage man that lives four houses down."

I've had plenty of friends tell me that their first time doing stand-up, they do well, and then they tank for a while after that. Kind of like the first time you do a drug, you're like, "Huh! This is pretty darn good," and then you spend all your money trying to get the same high.

For stand-up comedians that go onstage and get to write and perform and direct, and do all these things, the allure of a television show is still there but if it doesn't offer a level of creative fulfillment, it's oddly unappealing.

Comedians rarely have writers, and if you do it's usually a sign of laziness.

People need to write articles and they need to have angles in them and I'm grateful when people are doing articles, but I always say there's not a great mystery to stand-up comedy.

Don't take this the wrong way but I care more and I'm a better online friend than you. I also spend way to much time online.

The DC Improv food is amazingly edible for a comedy club.

My children have made me a better man, which is - in the end, that's probably more important than two more comedy specials or being in better shape.

Most of my material is , it doesn't necessarily involve a lot of editing. So even the show with the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia, I don't have to worry about some of the material being inappropriate.

I would say I'm - in the show, I'm a cultural Catholic, which is what I was.

There was [ in New York] - some of it was this perception of the Midwest that I realized in this multicultural city that - and I don't think it's as true as it was - but everyone was kind of like, what, are you Jewish? Are you Italian? What are you? You know, are you black? Are you da-da-da? Are you Puerto Rican? And so I ended up - my ethnic identity was Midwestern, was white bread. And so it informed a lot of my stand-up.

I grew up 45 minutes outside of Chicago.

When I started stand-up - and this is in the '90s - there was definitely people hadn't watched decades of Comedy Central, where people are really much more educated on stand-up comedy.

I left the Midwest thinking I didn't fit in. But when I got to New York, I realized how truly Midwestern I was.

I didn't think that it's something that would happen. I didn't think I would be in the position, emotionally or financially, to be able to do that. But I've been lucky [to have big family].

The idea of having a large family, I definitely had a romantic notion of it.

Even when you hear about a comedian getting married, among comedians, we're always kind of like, what are they doing?

I think stand-up comedy is this - it's this kind of indulgence and narcissism.

I know that Colbert could quote Thomas Aquinas and all this, but I'm somebody who, because it's a necessity for me on a personal basis. I need it because I'm a lunatic.

That's not to say that I'm a well-informed Catholic. I'm still in idiot.

I need the concept of mercy for me to have some semblance of self-admiration. So in real life, I'm probably somebody who is more devout.