I love that I can tell the truth and have people laugh at it.

Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.

I know how fiction matters to me, because if I want to express myself, I have to make up a story. Some people call it imagination. To me, it’s not imagination. It’s just a way of watching.

Anything I’ve ever said, I certainly was feeling at the time.

I intend to inspire people with my story: motivate young people that grew up like myself, or even not like myself. Just, you know, go through the human experience.

The two things in the world we all share in this world are laughter and pain. We’ve all got problems. The levels of those problems vary, but we’ve all got problems. When you can take things that are painful and make them funny, that’s a gift – to you and your audience.

To be honest with you, when I got into this I never thought about reviews. I never thought about what people would say about me. I was just a young guy who was excited to become a comedian and an actor and I just wanted to get to do what I got to do.

Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.

When the kids are laughing in the audience, I tear up, I’m so happy I did a nice thing.

I never sell a book. I sell myself. And the way to sell yourself is to be an instrument of love.

Myths which are believed in tend to become true.

I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.

I can honestly say, after talking about my mom passing away, I got the biggest weight off of my chest. Comedy is my therapy. That’s how I deal with my problems, my personal battles. I talk about it. I give it to my fans. When they laugh at it, it’s a release, for lack of a better word.

I know a lot of artists say this, but it’s hard to put myself in a box. I just write songs that I strongly believe in and that are coming form a special place. There’s no tricks.

There’s no point in saying anything but the truth.

Since childhood, I’ve been a clown. I’ve always liked being very funny or trying to make people laugh. It’s my original self.

I’m here to spread a message of hope. Follow your heart. Don’t follow what you’ve been told you’re supposed to do.

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.

It has always been my private conviction that any man who puts his intelligence up against a fish and loses had it coming.

Comedy isn’t necessarily all dialogue. Think of Buster Keaton: the poker face and all this chaos going on all around him. Sometimes it’s a question of timing, of the proper rhythm.

All the religions of the world, while they may differ in other respects, unitedly proclaim that nothing lives in this world but Truth.

I’m crazy and I don’t pretend to be anything else.

There is more to sex appeal than just measurements. I don’t need a bedroom to prove my womanliness. I can convey just as much sex appeal, picking apples off a tree or standing in the rain.

Some of the kids in school used to call my father a fake or a phony. That kind of thing brought on a few fights.

Some minds remain open long enough for the truth not only to enter but to pass on through by way of a ready exit without pausing anywhere along the route.

It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

I was born. When I was 23 I started telling jokes. Then I started going on television and doing films. That’s still what I am doing. The end.

My success comes in making fun of whatever you’re doing. That’s my way.

Falsehood is cowardice, the truth courage.

I live halfway between reality and theater at all times. And I was born this way.

Sincere words are not fine; fine words are not sincere.

I want the reader to feel something is astonishing – not the ‚what happens‘ but the way everything happens. These long short story fictions do that best, for me.

Engineering training deals with the exact sciences. That sort of exactness makes for truth and conscience. It might be good for the world if more men had that sort of mental start in life even if they did not pursue the profession.

People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy… and I keep it in a jar on my desk.

Every once in a while I get the highly inappropriate proposal which is like, ‚Wow, Really! You don’t even know me and I don’t know you at all, and you want that to happen? Tonight? Ok, I get off work at 7.30.‘

All fiction is about people, unless it’s about rabbits pretending to be people. It’s all essentially characters in action, which means characters moving through time and changes taking place, and that’s what we call ‚the plot‘.

A remark generally hurts in proportion to its truth.

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

The passive aggressive arguer comes armed with tricky tactics. They cannot take the risk that they might be wrong: their self-esteem is too intertwined with their opinions. It is more important to affirm their rightness, and sense of superiority, than to arrive at the truth.

Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.

I had a great time being a salesman because of the pitches that I gave when I was selling shoes. However, I don’t think I’m as well versed in shoes as I am in comedy. Being a salesman was all about being a people person, and I enjoy being around people. I also love talking to people – which is why I think I did so well.

What, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce.

It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.

When I’m on stage, it’s really intense. My mind is going a million miles an hour, trying to remember my act, trying to say it all the right way. It’s funny how different it looks and how it’s happening. There are three Fellini circuses in my head, and outwardly it looks like I’m going to get a bagel.

If you’re serious, you really understand that it’s important that you laugh as much as possible and admit that you’re the funniest person you ever met. You have to laugh. Admit that you’re funny. Otherwise, you die in solemnity.

People get a kick out of my stupidity.

Most country songs, certainly all the stuff I’ve written, are stories driven by characters.

I have never used Auto-Tune in a live television performance, and I have never used Auto-Tune in any of my concerts. That is a promise.

I didn’t start sweating until I had children. That was one of the first things I realized when my daughter Violet was born – I started getting wicked BO. You know there’s a difference between basketball BO and stress BO? This was definitely stress BO. Like, new dad BO.

In my research, I’ve interviewed a lot of people who never fit in, who are what you might call ‚different‘: scientists, artists, thinkers. And if you drop down deep into their work and who they are, there is a tremendous amount of self-acceptance.

I’m not searching for hard news; I’m not a journalist, but I’m interested in pushing to boundaries of where we can do the kind of stories that we want to do. I mean, it’s a big world and CNN has made it a lot bigger and they haven’t flinched.

Many people tell me that they don ‚t know what to feel when they finish one of my books because the story was dark, or complicated, or strange. But while they were reading it, they were inside my world and they were happy. That’s good.

A good laugh is sunshine in the house.

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

The only thing I know is I ain’t changing my brand. I know what I believe. I’m confident in what I know. And I’m gonna say it. And if folks like it, wonderful. If they don’t like it, I understand.

There’s different kinds of laughs. It’s like a baseball lineup: this guy’s your power hitter, this guy gets on base, this guy works out walks. If everybody does their job, we’re gonna win.

Truth is everybody is going to hurt you: you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for.

My heroes don’t have anything special. They have something to tell other people but they don’t know how, so they talk to themselves.

Why, I’d horse-whip you if I had a horse.

You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves.

Fiction is not necessarily about what you know, it’s about how you feel. That is the truth about fiction, and the other truth is that all science is a tool, and we use our tools not to actualise what we know, but to implement how we feel.