Patton Oswalt famous quotes

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

#Journey #Ideas #Records

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

#Inspiration #Ends #Jokes

I want to experience as many different tastes, sights, emotions, conflicts, and cultures as possible, so that I can expand the canvas of my memory and enrich my comedy.
-- Patton Oswalt

#Memories #Sight #Culture

The truly great actors, like Charlize Theron, are just like, "I'm an actor. For hire. I show up, I do my job." There's no "I'm just waiting for the inspiration." They just do their jobs. They say, "Let's go over the scene a few times and get it."
-- Patton Oswalt

#Jobs #Inspiration #Waiting

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

#Gold #Sticks #Coins

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

#Acting #Firsts #Schedules

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

#Passion #Long #Situation

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

#Honest #Being Honest #Term

You just do as many shows as you can to hone what it is you're working on.
-- Patton Oswalt

#Shows

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

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

#Drama #Interesting #Want

Knowing comedy is knowing human nature.
-- Patton Oswalt

#Knowing #Comedy #Human Nature

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

#Genius #Scene #Magnolias

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

#Laughing #Long #Silence

Any acting job that I ever got, I always treated it like I was a neophyte, I didn't know what I was doing and I was going to work just as hard as I do on my stand-up.
-- Patton Oswalt

#Jobs #Acting #Going To Work

Even if you're popular, there are times when you just feel like you're not a part of things.
-- Patton Oswalt

#Like You #Feels

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

#Dark #Comedian #Dangerous

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

#Mcdonalds #People #Transformation

I grew up in such a featureless, personality-less suburb. There was nothing to push against.
-- Patton Oswalt

#Personality #Grew #Grew Up

I hate all sidekicks.
-- Patton Oswalt

#Hate #Sidekicks #I Hate

I have a very tiny house in Burbank. I drive an 8-year-old car. I'm gonna drive it into the ground. I enjoy what I enjoy.
-- Patton Oswalt

#Years #Car #House

I have some shorter stories coming out in other books early next year. I might be pitching a re-vamp of Ghost Rider in the spring. We'll see.
-- Patton Oswalt

#Spring #Book #Years

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

#Order #Fire #Zombie

Anything's better than Gen X which is what we got. Thanks Douglas Coupland. We sound like a team of mutant vigalantees with frosted hair and chain wallets. Actually that's not completely horrible.
-- Patton Oswalt

#Team #Hair #Sound

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

#Cowboy #Magic #Puppets

Based on my own experience, when you're going through adolescence you don't know how the world works. You can't set a story in the world you live in because you don't know what a utility bill is, or how to budget your paycheck.
-- Patton Oswalt

#World #Bills #Stories

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.
-- Patton Oswalt

#Judging #Rooms #Size

I fantasize and idealize myself as Bugs Bunny, but I know deep down I'm Daffy Duck.
-- Patton Oswalt

#Ducks #Daffy Duck #Bugs

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

#Hate #Meals #I Hate Myself

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

#Kings #Couple #Believe

I'm still very much an atheist, except that I don't necessarily see religion as being a bad thing. So, that's a weird thing that I'm struggling with that seems to be offending both atheists and people that are religious.
-- Patton Oswalt

#Religious #Atheist #Struggle

We need conservatives that can accept gays, and then we need hippies that can shave and bathe.
-- Patton Oswalt

#Hippie #Gay #Needs

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

#Drink

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

#Art #Thinking #Views

It’s the method of consumption, not what’s on the plate.
-- Patton Oswalt

#Plates #Method #Consumption

There are times when I have to take, I call it a 'silence bath,' where I shut off all of the external gadgets. I go walk around, talk to people, and just live life for a while.
-- Patton Oswalt

#Life #People #Silence

My advice to you is be boring, square, ***** 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

#Kids #Rocks #Cds

This sounds like a brag, but I know how to make good fried rice. I learned in college. There are two secrets - take the rice after you cook it and let it get cold in the fridge. Then cook the egg like you're making a fried egg and just before it's done, dump the rice and veg on it and swirl it around.
-- Patton Oswalt

#College #Eggs #Two

We're rewarding either the reality or the appearance of youth, which is why you have all these people in their fifties trying to act like they're seventeen. You know, it's great to be young. Be young. By all means, be young. But always remember that youth is also kinda dumb, and doesn't know a lot yet.
-- Patton Oswalt

#Mean #Reality #People

What you want to worship above youth, I think, is beauty, and beauty is so beyond just appearances after a while. Because you can be with someone who's good-looking; if they open their mouths and they're an idiot, then they cease to be beautiful very quickly.
-- Patton Oswalt

#Beautiful #Thinking #Mouths

Yeah, there were a few years in the early nineties where I really began to hate what was valued as funny and just sort of what was valued in stand-up, period.
-- Patton Oswalt

#Hate #Years #Periods

There's no destination. There's no getting anywhere. There's just the going. The key to life is to make the going really fun. Because people that are like, “If I just get to this, then boom!” And then they get there and there's this dawning of an afterwards. Whereas I'm just always in the going. And it's not a frantic going like, “I gotta keep going or I'm gonna go nuts!” I can not do anything for weeks or months if I need to and just sit and read books or watch movies. I'm just as fine consuming and absorbing new art as I am trying to make it. But it's all in the going.
-- Patton Oswalt

#Art #Fun #Book

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

#Pain #Bye #Heartache

If the victories we create in our heads were let loose on reality, the world we know would drown in blazing happiness.
-- Patton Oswalt

#Reality #Victory #World

Zombies can't believe the energy we waste on nonfood pursuits.
-- Patton Oswalt

#Believe #Zombie #Waste

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

#Long #Ugly #Gorgeous

There's all kinds of those moments in your life where either through a weird set of circumstances, or a song you hear, or a smell you smell, or one person says something totally out of the context without the meaning that you assigned to it, but you snap back to the way you were when you were 14 or 15. We all deal with that.
-- Patton Oswalt

#Song #Smell #Way

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

#Mistake #People #Albums

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

#Men #Dvds #Age

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

#Nerd #Stereotype #Outcast

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

#Hands #Way #Slave

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

#Way #Adults #Actors

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

#Body #Function #Unhealthy

As much as I know people love the method and what you can draw out of yourself, a lot of acting is very imaginative.
-- Patton Oswalt

#People #Acting #Method

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

#Art #Focus #Garbage

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

#Country #Running #Dad

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

#Long #Evil #Humanity

I had a romance novel inside me, but I paid three sailors to beat it out if me with steel pipes.
-- Patton Oswalt

#Romance #Three #Steel

George Bush is not stupid. He's evil. OK? There's a huge difference between stupid and evil.
-- Patton Oswalt

#Stupid #Differences #Evil

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

#People #Want #Conversation

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

#Writing

If I were to just focus on stand-up, I could actually, paradoxically enough, be home way more, because I would leave on a Friday, go do a couple theaters Friday, Saturday, maybe Sunday, come home.
-- Patton Oswalt

#Friday #Couple #Home

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

#Writing #Want #Rooms

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

#Mean #Comedian #Ponds

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

#Past #Ipods #Superhero

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

#Winning #Hands #Nerd

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

#Stuff #United States #Complaining

The Kentucky Fried Chicken corporation made a bobble head of me and sent it to my management. No card, nothing.
-- Patton Oswalt

#Kentucky #Cards #Corporations

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

#Play #Laughing #Serious

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

#Kevin #Want #Lasts

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

#Airports #Cynical #Comedy

So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, 'The good outnumber you, and we always will.'
-- Patton Oswalt

#Ignorance #Eye #Garden