Nick Kroll Quotes

I found, especially with stand-up, that if a premise works, you can make the joke work. If a premise doesn't work, you can't force it to.

This is a perfect example of the power and ridiculousness of a website like Wikipedia. I did give a slightly contentious graduation speech, where I decided not to be funny as my classmates had hoped, which was why I was chosen. I was not valedictorian, that's for sure. Instead, I talked about the failure to communicate between the administration and the teachers and students. That's what was contentious about it. At some point, somebody wrote about that incident on my Wikipedia page. And then somebody added the bit about me exposing my genitals to the crowd.

Contrary to widespread belief, I do know something about science.

Really, I just love doing comedy. Any form it takes is great, as long as I can keep doing it, you know? If I can do my show and 'The League' while also getting to do other bits, that's awesome.

I would be psyched to get a phone call from Al Sharpton. I need to find out who does his hair. It's beautiful. It's a gorgeous mane.

In high school, I went to a place called the Mountain School. It's on a farm in Vermont, and I read Emerson and Thoreau and ran around the woods. Now I go hiking with a bunch of my comedy buddies. We talk about our emotions. I also do a lot of writing on hikes, just to get the blood flowing and the ideas moving.

Robert Altman made that movie Kansas City about the jazz scene in the city, and we saw that band all together, and that was an amazing show. That's what I got into. I like jazz.

For me, the goal wasn't to turn the stand-up special on its head, but to do what I do specifically, and hopefully that reads as something new.

The immediacy of public interaction is just unbeatable.

Although I'm a comedian, I'm also an amateur survivalist.

Go ahead and make up a ton of lies about me. That's way more interesting than pretending Wikipedia has any real information.

My friends, we all improvise together usually. So we write what I think is a good script but always leave a lot of room to find stuff on the day; and we always do find something. That's the advantage to having actors who are, in their own right, writers.

It's almost worse because you think that you're mature and classic when you're in the newsie cap jazz phase. It's not a great look, a young person trying to seem old and mature and cultured. That's a summarily not-cool look.

My experience in TV is that it takes time for shows to find their way.

Music was not a big deal to me when I was in middle school. And then I slowly became a big jazz fan. Even more than concerts, a lot of my high school time was spent going to jazz clubs in the city.

It's a real democratic time for comedy, and I think my special is a sign for that. You don't have to just be a classic stand-up to get a special, or you don't just have to be on Saturday Night Live to do characters and sketch on TV. The web has allowed me to show that there are different ways to make people laugh, and the special is a combination of those things.

It was sort of in the jam-band era and it was at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester [New York], right where I grew up. I actually went back there a couple years ago when I was on tour for Kroll Show. I performed at that theater, which was really cool to go back to the first place I'd gone to a concert.

Anyone you give a ton of money to is going to go slightly crazy. I don't think comedians are particularly special in that regard; they just are better or more vocal in their expressions of their craziness.

My goal was to do something that incorporated all the stuff I do and have it feel like something new, like it was hopefully taking the stand-up special paradigm and turning it on its head.

I guess there should be somewhere on the Internet that feels like a source of sacred truth. But Wikipedia sure isn't it.

I like an otter. I like a sea lion. I like a walrus. That's my favorite version of a sea creature.

I think that being on the road and doing more and more stand-up has allowed me to figure out ... like, I don't think I'll ever be Bill Hicks, but I think I'm figuring out what my opinion is on things.

What business would judged on the first week that it's in business?

Really, more than anything, The 2000 Year Old Man is a huge influence on all of our comedy, but specifically the live version of Oh, Hello.

I came to New York and started doing stand-up and improv, and started auditioning for commercials and voiceovers and stuff. My first job was on a pilot of that prank show called 'Boiling Points' on MTV.

Don't watch Kroll Show if you don't have a Nielsen box. I honestly don't care. Feel free to DVR it and not watch it because that will somehow help my ratings maybe, but honestly I'm talking to the four of you with a Nielsen box. If you have a Nielsen box, like, who are you? Where do you live? How do I find you? You're a unicorn and I don't believe that you exist.

My best friend, Andrew Goldberg - and this is genuinely not me trying to cross-promote, but this new Netflix show I'm doing called Big Mouth is about me and my best friend, Andrew Goldberg, from childhood - but there was a year when I went to his house after school every day and we watched Wayne's World and ate Doritos.

I like the idea of people getting to know you from different angles and then realizing "That guy is also that guy!" "Oh, he does that!" I really like having a number of different ways to reach people.

I'm sure there are people who say like, "I was wearing weird emo eyeliner," but there's something pretty embarrassing about the jazz phase.

As long as it's not an easy, outdated stereotype and it comes from an interesting or emotionally driven place, then anyone can be made fun of.

It was easier to know a character's point of view than it was to figure out what your point of view was.

Everybody gets better looking on TV as shows go on.Even the nerds on "Big Bang Theory" are getting better looking. Their clothes are getting nicer. They're better groomed. It works for them.

There's just a feeling, when you're just an actor - I have great admiration for people who are just actors. I don't understand it, the idea of waiting to get cast, being at the whim of others. I find it incredibly powerless and frightening, so that's why I've been constantly trying to create my own content.

My first job. I got fired from this MTV prank show, or I didn't make the cut of what ended up being, as we all know, Boiling Points. It was my first professional job and I was bragging.

Whether it's corporate investigations or comedy, there are certain inherent truths to trying to get what you want while trying to be a decent person doing it.

Sometimes shows suffer from having many cooks in the kitchen.

For me, I was literally trying to stay afloat. I never actually thought I would get my own sketch show. So the idea that one day I would have my own show is pretty wild. But once I got it, I thought, 'Yeah, this is exactly what I always wanted to do.'

Seinfeld has his way of telling jokes - and I'm not comparing myself to Seinfeld, his genius is observing the small details of everyday life and finding humor in it.

I was, like, a history major, and I minored in art and Spanish, but I found myself gravitating toward media studies as time went on.

For me, the best characters are the ones that feel fully formed inside and out, so I try to have a very clear vision of exactly what they would wear, top to bottom, who they are, what their backstory is, what their family situation is, who are their friends, just creating as much of a three-dimensional character [as possible]. Because I think you could do a very broad character, but as long as there's some emotional truth to them you can get away with really crazy things.

I was going to have Brian La Croix do a cameo on Degrassi. But, unfortunately, the scheduling didn't work out. When I was in Toronto, they weren't shooting. To me, that would've been a pretty crazy meta experience.

I think that the web and its various facets are incredibly useful in just building a fan base and getting your chops better.

I'm really into pandas right now. They're really scratching an itch for me. They're so goddamn cute.

You think you're going to be on TV a year out of college and you're not. Then you tell people and it's embarrassing. And then it's not a big deal at all.