Oswalt Quotes & Sayings

It's something we do every week. Every week kind of has bigger name headliners. It's all just our taste. There's a lot of people like Ian Edwards or Dan Mintz who a lot of people haven't heard of yet, but we know are really great. When we started the show five years ago it wasn't because Patton Oswalt needs another place to play. It was because we had a lot of new friends like BJ Novak or Morgan Murphy, who didn't have any club to play. — B. J. Porter

Doing 'Young Adult' was really reassuring to me in a lot of ways. It confirmed a lot of suspicions I had about great actors. — Patton Oswalt

To get asked to do stuff like 'United States Of Tara' and 'Caprica' is terrific. I can't complain. — Patton Oswalt

I'm sitting at the bar, rearranging the order of my jokes. I'm under the delusion that I'm having bad shows because of some cosmic misalignment of words, phrases, and ideas. I may as well have cast runes into a spirit bowl, hoping that the collective heart of the audience would open to my necromantic call. Maybe that's how jugglers do it. Those guys never have shitty sets. — Patton Oswalt

We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We'd have eaten ourselves alive long ago. — Patton Oswalt

Every audience is different, even within the same venue. You have to just make every audience your audience; you can't pre-judge an audience based on the size of the room or the type of room. You've just got to be in the moment and go with it. — Patton Oswalt

In my mind, I was always a comedian who was going to branch into writing. — Patton Oswalt

The idea of, 'The journey is the destination' is put into action by browsing in an indie record store. Besides, a human being is a much better guide than a 'More Like This' link on the internet. — Patton Oswalt

Any comedian who tells you how dark and dangerous they are, they're not dark and dangerous. — Patton Oswalt

What I was trying to say in that bit, without saying it out loud, is that there were things - you're right, everything is very politicized these days, literally down to what kind of coffee you drink - that I used to fight with people about. And by the way, not just people like Republicans and Christians, but liberal friends of mine and very radical left-wing types, and alternative, indie types. — Patton Oswalt

I'm so beyond genre, drama, comedies, I just want to do really good, interesting projects. — Patton Oswalt

I'm such a bookworm, and I'm such a people-watcher. It took the Internet a while to catch on in Ireland, because the culture there is, you go to the pub and talk to people there, and that's how you get the news and all the gossip. You just do it face to face. And culturally, you just couldn't understand. — Patton Oswalt

Does anyone act more like an overserious senior citizen with time running out on their chance for immortality than someone in their twenties? — Patton Oswalt

Guys think I'm staring them down, but they watch ME for signs. Why can't I do the same to them? — Roy Oswalt

... some of us had built whole careers - pointing out how unfair and whimsical and chaotic the entertainment business was, how it rarely rewarded the truly talented. None of us could see how it never rewarded the inert — Patton Oswalt

But for the most part, for the majority of a stand-up audience, you better have new stuff they've not heard. And if you put an album out, just consider that material gone. At least that's how I see it. — Patton Oswalt

You know, in Los Angeles, you're constantly in your car, you're sealed up, you're not walking around. Whereas in New York, after a while, all your stuff is kind of public, in one way or the other. I'm not saying either one of those is bad; they're both great for a very specific kind of comedian. And I'm glad that they both exist. — Patton Oswalt

You can be an amateur and have a passion for something, but it takes a long time to actually become a professional, meaning that you can handle any situation. — Patton Oswalt

Growing up, there are always those kids who are only happy when they are making someone else upset. That is unfortunately just how some people are. And their parents were fine. Some people are just born with bad wiring. — Patton Oswalt

And you'll walk in rolling your eyes and you'll walk out whistling sadly through your teeth because the fuel of the Nerd Mafia is disappointment and exclusion.
- On the Watchmen movie — Patton Oswalt

I like confounding expectations. I can expand what it is I am able to do, and hopefully get to do more weird, interesting projects like this. There's nothing wrong with doing comedies, and I'm not against comedies, either, but I always want to do stuff that keeps me off my guard and gets me out of my comfort zone. And how the audience perceives that ... It's out of my hands. And I don't get that frustrated by it, because I'm on to the next thing at that point. — Patton Oswalt

Meal isn't over when I'm full. Meal's over when I hate myself. — Patton Oswalt

Wars are usually really popular with people that aren't gonna be affected by them. 'Cause it's just entertainment, and it's just weird, like, 'Well, we've got to show the world that we're strong.' No we don't. And by the way, that has nothing to do with you. Why are you equating yourself with that ... you know what I mean? — Patton Oswalt

I was able to come up with a couple articles for the magazine, I was able to solicit help from a bunch of my friends to contribute pieces: Patton Oswalt, Seth Green, Emo Phillips, Chris Hardwick, John Hodgman, and more. It's very much a "Weird Al" themed issue, so I'd like to think that there's a lot of "Weird Al" flavor throughout but I think it'd be generous really to call me an editor. — Al Yankovic

Is it bad when you refer to all alcohol as "Pain Go Bye-Bye Juice"? — Patton Oswalt

People will find transformation and transcendence in a McDonald's hash brown if it's all they've got. — Patton Oswalt

Every zombie story is fundamentally about a breakdown of order, with the infrastructure intact. That infrastructure might be on fire, yes. — Patton Oswalt

I don't care how high my shrink increases my Lexapro dosage - I WANT TO BE A ROBOT THAT HELPS WOLVES HAVE SEX. Otherwise my parents threw away the money they spent on my college education. — Patton Oswalt

I grew up in a small town where you know everyone, .. I've been told all my life that I come from too small a town to compete with some of the guys that competed in a higher level growing up. And that kind of drove me through college and drove me in the minor leagues, because I got to face all those big 5- A [school district] guys in the minors. — Roy Oswalt

Knock on wood, my groupies tend to be very artistic, creative people - sometimes way more creative than I am. — Patton Oswalt

If you play comedic scenes like they're really serious, then it's so much more funny than if you're going for a laugh. — Patton Oswalt

Its gaze unlocked a room in my nightmares which should have remained closed. — Patton Oswalt

I mean, the death in the late eighties and early nineties really shook out a lot of hacks. The pond just sort of dried up for a lot of really bad comedians. — Patton Oswalt

I look pretty nondescript. I don't go out of my way to ... I don't express my personality with my clothes, with my car or my, you know, house. I express with my personality; so as far as what I wear - I don't really care about that. — Patton Oswalt

Somebody is going to find a way digitally that is just as innovative. In the end, the tools can change, but there is always someone who can think of something cool to do. — Patton Oswalt

When you act, you're being asked to pretend in a very rigid, controlled environment. It's very un-childlike. So a lot of times, when you put kids in that situation, you hope they have a better support system outside of what they're doing to bring them back to reality at the end of the day and to keep them well-rounded. — Patton Oswalt

I'm glad that that era of stand-up is over, because I think it adversely affected a lot of people who could have been really, really great comedians. Because they unconsciously or subconsciously stifled their wild impulses, and were thinking about the five clean minutes for The Tonight Show, or the 20-minute sitcom pitch as a stand-up act. — Patton Oswalt

Cheap liquor is a magic potion that can turn you into a puppet cowboy before it kills you. — Patton Oswalt

The great ones show you what you can get away with. The shitty ones remind you what never to bother with. — Patton Oswalt

As unhealthy as I am, I'm weirdly aware of exactly how my body functions. — Patton Oswalt

Take what you need from [films] and get out of the dark once in a while. You're going to have more of the dark than you can handle, sooner than you think. The thing about the dark is it can never get enough of you. — Patton Oswalt

Now we live in this DVD, iTunes, Hulu age, and show creators and networks are realizing that and letting shows develop on those terms rather than 'We gotta just punch it week to week, man.' Now they're like, 'What will happen if someone watches the entire show?' — Patton Oswalt

I love the beginning of Magnolia, the thing about the dealer. That scene is genius. Brilliantly acted. — Patton Oswalt

Part of being in your twenties is not knowing an ally when you see one. — Patton Oswalt

I don't want to get into extended conversations with people on MySpace, because there are friends I have extended conversations with every day. — Patton Oswalt

He smelled like carpeting, Scotch tape, and steak sauce. — Patton Oswalt

If you hit a midget on the head with a stick, he turns into 40 gold coins. — Patton Oswalt

The man is clear in his mind. But his soul is mad. — Patton Oswalt

I have to drink this much to be as unfunny as you. — Patton Oswalt

I suspected, around the time I graduated college, that we're all versions of targets, fired at by indifferent events. If that was the case, then I wanted to be a moving target. — Patton Oswalt

Hobos' (a slang term that combines the words 'hope' and 'bowl of beans given to me for free by a woman who then initiated intercourse') — Patton Oswalt

I've been very lucky in my life in terms of people who are able to tolerate me. — Patton Oswalt

Imitation leads to exhilaration when you follow it back to its source. — Patton Oswalt

Having enough money has to go hand in hand with living in a way that you're not being a slave to your possessions. — Patton Oswalt

I identify [myself] as a stand-up first. Even though lately there's been an explosion of acting on my schedule. — Patton Oswalt

I've gotten very cynical and kind of anhedonic about all the things I have to do to get to do comedy: all the travel, hotels, and airports. — Patton Oswalt

Stand-up is something I just truly love to do, so I'll always go back to it. I'll never stop doing it, that's for sure. — Patton Oswalt

My advice to you is be boring, square, asshole parents ... When I have kids, the most recent CD I will own - Phil Collins, No Jacket Required, and I'll rave about it. 'Do you like rock 'n' roll? 'Cause this is rockin' good stuff, kid.' — Patton Oswalt

It wasn't until I went to college and met different people from different areas of life - and then went to San Francisco and met people who really knew who the hell they were - that I kind of caught up in a hurry. — Patton Oswalt

The pitch would normally be low, but my ball starts carrying and stays on a sustained plane. Everyone always complains - 'that ball is low' - but then you go back and look at the tape, and it's right there. My catchers tell me, and the hitters tell me, that the ball stays true flight the last five or six feet. — Roy Oswalt

With acting, you see some of the kids are literally just off the street, untrained, and they are great. And others are off the street, untrained, and kind of horrible. — Patton Oswalt

There's something kind of beautiful about that pure love of things. Like, "I'll show that I love the thing I love by hating everything else." — Patton Oswalt

I update my MySpace every day, I update my Facebook fan page, but that's about the extent of it. I don't want to get into extended conversations with people on MySpace, because there are friends I have extended conversations with every day. I'm on the phone every day. There's like five people I just call and yak with every single day. And that to me is my Internet. You can replace the Internet with five really smart friends. — Patton Oswalt

I can't say that I ever abided nerd stereotypes: I was never alone or felt outcast. — Patton Oswalt

A lot of nerds aren't aware they're nerds. A geek has thrown his hands up to the universe and gone, 'I speak Klingon - who am I fooling? You win! I'm just gonna openly like what I like.' Geeks tend to be a little happier with themselves. — Patton Oswalt

You have to be ruthless with yourself, in terms of being honest about what is working and what is not. — Patton Oswalt

Roy Oswalt is a drop and drive pitcher. What is a drop and drive pitcher? He is a guy who drops and drives. Very simple. — Tim McCarver

During the "first Thanksgiving" at Plymouth, Wampanoag Indians - including a Patuxet Indian named Squanto - helped teach Pilgrims how to farm, fish, and hunt and shared the bounty of that first feast. A TRADITION THAT CONTINUES TODAY AND JESUS AND 9/11. — Patton Oswalt

This is a dozer you can do anything with. — Roy Oswalt

The problem is, and I'm just as guilty of this, a lot of people see their follower count increase and mistake that for friendships. It's great to have followers, especially if you want to sell albums, promote shows, or promote your friends, but you still need to get outside and talk to other human beings. — Patton Oswalt

But the idea that this world is not self-explanatory and that revelation from beyond it is necessary to understand it is profoundly distasteful to us humans. It means that we are not in control of our own destiny or able to make our own disposition of things for our own benefit. This thought, the thought that we cannot supply our ultimate needs for ourselves, that we are dependent on someone or something utterly beyond us, is deeply troublesome. — John N. Oswalt

You have one good game or season, so what? You have to have a career. — Roy Oswalt

And I couldn't take my eyes off Pete. He ate dinner like he always did, in three or four huge, whoofing bites, before heading back out front to his cone of warmth, his coffee, his cigarettes, and ghostly tunes piping from his little transistor radio. And most important, to whatever thoughts drowned out the voices of his own family saying "hello" and "happy holidays."
I watched him because I couldn't believe that could be anyone's comfortable horizon. A tiny porch on a dark corner near a highway. We lucked out living on a planet made thrilling by billions of years of chance, catastrophe, miracles, and disaster, and he'd rejected it. You're offered the world every morning when you open your eyes. I was beginning to see Pete as a representative of all the people who shut that out, through cynicism, religion, fear, greed, or ritual. — Patton Oswalt

If Kevin James or Paul Giamatti drop weight, I'm done. I don't want to be the last pudge out there. — Patton Oswalt

That shit [religion] was going on all over the planet. They would tell them about sky cookies, or sky pie, or sky baklava. And as each of these civilizations grew, they built ships; they'd go visit each other, and the one guy would walk off the boat and go,'Hey, did you hear the good news about the sky baklava?' and the first guy went,'It's CAKE, motherfucker! You're dead! — Patton Oswalt

I like to write, I like to do stand-up, I like to act. — Patton Oswalt

One of my groupies gave me a film that they made, and it ended up being amazing, so I got it shown at South by Southwest. If I can help get their stuff out there, then great. — Patton Oswalt

All the truly great stand-ups say, 'I go onstage, and I work on jokes. The inspiration will happen while I'm doing my work.' To me, in the end, the surest thing is work. — Patton Oswalt

Everything we have today that's cool comes from someone wanting more of something they loved in the past. Action figures, videogames, superhero movies, iPods: All are continuations of a love that wanted more. — Patton Oswalt

On any given night, I can throw a shutout. — Roy Oswalt

I remember, when 9/11 went down, my reaction was, 'Well, I've had it with humanity.' But I was wrong. — Patton Oswalt

I'm grateful that I had that uphill battle for 10 years of going onstage and having nobody know who I was, because you have to win them over. — Patton Oswalt

As you get older as a comedian and keep doing it, what you actually start to cherish on stage is not the build-up to the jokes, but how comfortable you can be in the silence and the non-laughing parts, and how long you can take the audience without a laugh to then get a huge reaction. — Patton Oswalt

I haven't sworn off Facebook. I'm on Facebook. There's a fan page on Facebook that I will update, but I'm on there myself under a pseudonym, because there were a lot of people able to private-message me on Facebook, and it was getting really weird. — Patton Oswalt

Knowing comedy is knowing human nature. — Patton Oswalt

I've hung out in the writer's room a few times, but the fact is we've got such a good writing staff, I don't want to get my peanut butter fingerprints on anything. — Patton Oswalt

I don't have a massive fan base. I don't have Patton Oswalt numbers, but the fan base I have is incredibly generous, and of the 22,000 people who follow me on Twitter, I think almost all of those people participate. — Greg Behrendt

I visited Surrey in the early fall of 1994, and I would return only if I was tasked to kill a demon to save the world. Maybe not even then. Sorry, Surrey. Sorry, world. Yay, hypothetical demon. — Patton Oswalt

90% of every art form is garbage - dance and stand-up, painting and music. Focus on the 10% that's good, suck it up, and drive on. — Patton Oswalt

I mean, all alternative comedy is are comedians that have being doing it for so long, for so long, that they were relaxed enough to start becoming personal on stage. — Patton Oswalt

I'm just trying to stay aggressive and mix things up enough to be successful. — Roy Oswalt

I love astute observations and really great wordplay. I love the way that Louis C.K. observes life, and I love the way Patton Oswalt talks about it. — Greg Behrendt

It's like our country is being run by a bunch of bad alcoholic dads right now. — Patton Oswalt

I think I realized it was an art form at the beginning, but it took me a really long time before I was able to view what I was performing myself as an art form. — Patton Oswalt

I've been in the same place for 10 years and having to say goodbye and clean out the locker is the toughest part. — Roy Oswalt

It doesn't matter who's in the box. You go after them and get them out the best way you can. — Roy Oswalt

The apocalypse is coming, that's the one thing I like about George Bush, I really think he can get us into the ... apocalypse, like the BIBLICAL ... I really think he believes that he'll be the guy in the white hat. I think he's read the Stephen King novel The Stand a couple times, and he really thinks there's a dark man in the desert somewhere and he's gonna fight him or something. — Patton Oswalt

I hate all sidekicks. — Patton Oswalt

Lot of ugly funny dudes end up with some pretty gorgeous women. Women are much deeper than us in choosing a mate - they see in the long term. — Patton Oswalt

If someone like this were to like me, to like my comedy, and to like the way I conduct myself professionally, it would mean that I suck as a person. — Patton Oswalt