Marc Maron Quotes

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.

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.

The next evolutionary step is into the screen.

Jerusalem Syndrome is actually a rare psychological condition that occurs to some visitors to the Middle East. They get to Israel and just snap.

I look at every book as a self-help book.

The Internet has usurped the collective unconscious and access to cosmic consciousness has become difficult and almost primitive.

The last day i was home i took the rental car up old 14 behind the Sandia Mountains. as i drove north toward Santa Fe past Madrid I rolled the window down halfway and let the cold, brisk, February air come into the car. I smelled the pinon trees and the damp earth. The Gray came over me. My life flashed through my heart in one deep rush of feeling. When I made the turn around the mountain to the west, the mesas and valleys spread out before me under the orange and gold horizon. The sun hit me like a wave that flooded out the past and dissolved any idea of the future, and I felt okay and whole for about twenty minutes.

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

Most of the comics that I talk to I've never talked to for more than ten minutes ever. So 95 percent of the time you're really hearing the first conversation between me and that guy on the podcast.

It seems people are more willing to let other people control their minds now and recreational drug use doesn't seem to have that same renegade sense of adventure that it once did.

In the sixties and seventies you could probably name all the great comics. It was still special.

Hopefully standup will become special again.

In most cases the only difference between depression and disappointment is your level of commitment.

The demand for standup in the eighties was created by how easy it was to exploit 'comedians' and create very cheap television programming.

What comics sacrifice and what lives they live - I know that most of their lives, their adult lives, they're sitting around or walking around with notebooks, writing things down. Usually they're fairly sensitive. Usually they're very bright. And that makes them poets.

A lot of people think that Jesus is coming back. That's fine, it's your right. But you know, I live in New York, and I think he's running a little late. I'm asking myself, 'Alright, what happens if Jesus comes back tomorrow? What - does he make rounds to churches?' 'OK, everyone who's been good, buses leave in 10 minutes. I'll meet you in front of the post office. I gotta go. Oh, don't tell the Jews I'm back.'

As I became very conscious and more aware of things I got very into the beatniks and that kind of stuff. They were very important to me for a few years.

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

Notebooks. There are dozens of notebooks. I always carry notebooks with me. I scribble in them in a barely readable scrawl. I do not write jokes. I write moments. Thoughts. Fragments that I have to sweat over as if they're cryptic texts in a lost language when I try to interpret them. That shouldn't be part of my process - decoding my own writing - but it has been for my entire life. What does that say about me? Why can't I make it easy? I need to complicate everything to protect myself from success and to remain complicated and overwhelmed.

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.

Worse than the feeling of loss that comes with a breakup is the feeling of losing. Loss is a state of emotional injury that you can get past; losing is a feeling of humiliation and defeat that stays fresh. The latter causes most of the problems in the world. If there is another man involved, it is almost impossible not to judge yourself as a failure and see him as an enemy.

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.

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

Imagining the worst has always been a great comfort to me. If there is turbulence there is an imminent crash. If she doesn't pick up the phone, she is fucking someone. If there is a lump it is a tumor. By thinking like this I protect myself from disappointment. And if anything other than the worst-case scenario unfolds, what a pleasant surprise!

I live in Los Angeles, I know it exists. I know you're not supposed to taste air.

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

For my next trick I will make everyone understand me.

Before hoarding became a phenomenon, people just called it "collecting" or "being nostalgic." I don't hoard, exactly, but I get it. It's a response to our need and desire for purpose, order, definition, and a fortress. It's a calling that requires constant management, control, and obsessive attention. I am amassing artifacts from the history of me. My garage is the storeroom and temporary exhibition hall of the yet-to-be-built museum documenting the rise and fall of the Marc Age. I am the curator. I decide the meaning and worth of the collection based on my feelings in a moment.

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.

Left wing, right wing, I am wingless and tired of trying to fly. Here comes the ground.

Some of you may be perfectly happy with mediocrity. Some of you will get nothing but heartbreak. Some of you will be heralded as geniuses and become huge. Of course, all of you think that one describes you ... hence the delusion necessary to push on.

Most of my comedy writing happens through improvisation on stage; doing it in the moment.

Most of the books I have are indicators of my insecurity. I really wanted to be an intellectual. I really wanted to understand Sartre. I thought that was what made people smart. I have tried to read Being and Nothingness no fewer than twenty times in my life. I really thought that every answer had to be in that book. Maybe it is. 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. I underline profusely but I don't retain much. Reading is like a drug. When I am reading from these books it feels like I am thinking what is being read, and that gives me a rush. That is enough. I glean what I can. I finish some of the unfinished thoughts lingering around in my head by adding the thoughts of geniuses and I build from there. There are bookmarks in most of the denser tomes at around page 20 to 40 because that was where I said, "I get it." Then I put them back on the shelf.

Conversation is a beautiful thing. When I was a younger guy, just wandering around talking to people was what kept me connected to the world.

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.

Americans don't understand irony? I am an intelligent person living in the United States. My entire existence is ironic.

I've gotta stop thinking I know what other people think, cause most of 'what other people think' is something I'm making up. So I should just let them have their experience, I'll have my experience and not pretend to know, and just get past that. [I think that] is a major obstacle: manifesting that insecurity, that fear. Believing the audience in your head as opposed to what's really going on in the world - not responding to the one I'm making up, which is always going to judge me harder than the real one.

Is there any indication we shouldn't be depressed? Are you living on the same planet that I am? Do you ever think that depression might be the reasonable human response to the crap we're going through as a species, meant to propel us into the next evolutionary step or, at least, into taking some different course of action, so that we might survive? Do you ever think that maybe it's the happy people that are really screwed up in the head?

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

I think that standup has always been an acquired taste and there was always only a handful of performers that were really inspired.

The bile makes it better. I am an information wasting machine - 100s of words a day.

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.

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.

Faith in the face of disappointment is only enhanced by laughter in the face of pain.

I used to be jealous; I'm not jealous anymore. And a miracle happened to me, because if you're jealous, it's a cancer, it's a plague on your spirit, it really is. And I actually cured jealousy in a very weird way - I cured it with mathematics. And I'm not a math person at all, but I've been with my wife for about seven years, so we have had sex probably, I'd like to think, like, 9 million times or, at least, 1,500. So, the way I figured it, if she goes out and screws some other guy once - I'm still winning.

Comedians in their infancy are generally selfish, irresponsible, emotionally retarded, morally dubious, substance-addicted animals who live out of boxes and milk crates. They are plagued with feelings of failure and fraudulence. They are prone to fleeting fits of manic grandiosity and are completely dependent on the acceptance and approval of rooms full of strangers, strangers the comedian resents until he feels sufficiently loved and embraced.
Perhaps I am only speaking for myself here.

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?!'

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.

If you don't like something it's okay to shut the fuck up about it and find something you do like.

I just wanted to be a good comic and had no sense of show business, but at some point you want the opportunity to write a show about your life.

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.

Get yourself in a situation where you have no choice.

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.

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

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.

I used to do a lot of drugs. I didn't stop because I didn't enjoy them; I stopped because I couldn't handle the commitment.

When I was a kid watching comedians on TV and listening to their records they were the only ones that could make it all seem okay. They seemed to cut through the bullshit and disarm fears and horror by being clever and funny. I don't think I could have survived my childhood without watching stand-up comics. When I started doing comedy I didn't understand show business. I just wanted to be a comedian. Now, after twenty-five years of doing stand-up and the last two years of having long conversations with over two hundred comics I can honestly say they are some of the most thoughtful, philosophical, open-minded, sensitive, insightful, talented, self-centred, neurotic, compulsive, angry, fucked-up, sweet, creative people in the world.

What you don't know about your parents is what becomes fascinating as you get older. They

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.

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.

I'm not against people just being funny or telling stories. I don't need to delve into the soft, dark core all the time. If it happens, it happens.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

I'm not for everyone. I'm barely for me.

Once I learned how to talk, personally, by myself to any number of people, which means do radio without talking to anyone in particular on the air - I just found that my brain became very free to engage in a sort of stream-of-consciousness style of doing what I do.

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?

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.

If you find yourself in conversation with someone you know and that person brings up someone you both know and before he says another word you mutter, "That guy's a fucking asshole," you might be a little bitter. If you find yourself dismissing universally acclaimed landmark achievements, saying, for example, "The Godfather is an okay movie," you might be bitter.

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.

There was a period when I was getting a lot of banana bread, because I mentioned someone cooked me banana bread, and then everyone cooked me baked stuff, and I would take it to the hotel, and it was making me fat.

I always thought I was funny, but I was very sensitive, and very provocative just to get a rise out of people.

I don't know if I am romanticizing, mythologizing, or being nostalgic. I assume all three. That seems to be how the brain breaks things down after a certain age. I

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?

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.

It amazes me that we are all on Twitter and Facebook. By "we" I mean adults. We're adults, right? But emotionally we're a culture of seven-year-olds. Have you ever had that moment when are you updating your status and you realize that every status update is just a variation on a single request: "Would someone please acknowledge me?

[ ... ] 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.

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.

They are not testing comics for drugs. If our job is dependent on that, there would be three working comics in the country, and two of them would have puppets.

We're built to deal with death, disease, failure, struggle, heartbreak, problems. It's what separates us from the animals and why we envy and love animals so much. We're aware of it all and have to process it. The way we each handle being human is where all the good stories, jokes, art, wisdom, revelations, and bullshit come from.

I need to complicate everything to protect myself from success and to remain complicated and overwhelmed. I

Comedy is obviously a matter of personal taste and the world always needs a clown and some people have no taste at all and any clown will do.

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

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

Whether people know the evolution of the conversation or not, I don't know, but thematically, as a comedian, I stay in the same ballpark - around my issues and my philosophy of life.

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.

Your insecurity and neediness is what makes you a big neurotic ball of comedy genius.

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

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.

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!"

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.

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.

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.

I was married once before, and I stopped.

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.

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.'

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