Abbi Jacobson
I drew a lot. I always had sketchbooks. My parents were really great about any gift-giving holiday - birthdays, Hanukkah, Christmas - it was always art supplies for my brother and I.Collection: Christmas
I'm so thankful for that struggling period. That time is really great where you have no idea what's going to happen.Collection: Thankful
What I love about comedy is that it's unquestionably working. There are varying degrees of that, where there's something that makes you smile and is funny versus something that makes you hysterically laugh.Collection: Smile
Museums are interesting. This place where we're almost buying admission to take a break from our lives.
I always have a good pen with me.
I am obsessed with the painter Jonas Wood, but I don't think I'll ever be able to afford one of his paintings. He's an L.A.-based painter; his stuff is incredible.
Why does 'writer' have no gender, but 'actor' has a gender? What is that?
I definitely relate so much to a lot of women in comedy, but I don't love segregating the genders. I'm just as influenced by male comedians as I am female comedians.
I feel like comedy had a boys'-club label when we were starting.
When I lived in Baltimore, I would come down fairly often to go to the Hirshhorn, and one of my good friends from high school went to Georgetown. I actually ended up going to Annapolis a lot. I had a car, and it was such a serene place to drive.
When I was in high school, my mom worked at Bed, Bath and Beyond, so I was always there.
You know all those young people watching Comedy Central love 'Frasier.'
I just got really into this one girl on Instagram and had her paint little pineapples on my nails during shooting.
When we make the show, we are always talking about how the show is really in between what we make and what the viewer thinks of it.
I love comedy, but I was just obsessed with 'SNL' growing up.
If people watch 'Broad City' very closely, we just drop lines about people we love, just to say we like them.
I've been watching 'The Cosby Show' and 'Roseanne' a lot right now, and those work so well because they're not, like, jokey comedies; they are coming from real characters. We want our show to be like that. A family show.
Someone like Amy Poehler, I don't know, but I feel like I know her. I think everyone feels like they know her.
We couldn't pitch the show without having created one, at least one 20 to 25 minute version of 'Broad City.' We wouldn't know how to describe it.
We love to start from a real place, whether it's us or our friends or working on a story from a writer's friend.
I had a weirdly awesome high-school experience.
I'm from outside Philadelphia, a town called Wayne, which is, like, 25 minutes northwest.
I'm not super, super religious. If this is okay to say, I'm more culturally Jewish.
I started getting really interested in comedy when I was in middle school.
I ended up going to college for visual arts but moved up to New York after I graduated from college in 2006 and started going gung ho to the Upright Citizens Brigade, and I realized that that was what I was really interested in and what I really wanted to do.
We just sort of thought a Web series would be a cool thing to be able to send to our parents to show them that we were, in fact, actually doing comedy.
I definitely started to perform a little bit in middle school, but not the typical musical/play route. I think that I am funny, but it was more of a social thing, where that was my part in my circle of friends.
Everybody has will - you just have to gather it. And I guess you choose where your inspiration comes from and give yourself that permission.
I'm really inspired by the power of the individual. People like Gloria Steinem.
Female-driven shows have to be every single thing and are constantly criticized in a way that male-driven shows are not.
I would love to be at a place where a girl character can also be a role model for young boys.
I recently saw this home video where my brother is playing this character Arsenio Grimley, who is a mix of Arsenio Hall and Ed Grimley - which, clearly, is my parents' doing, because he's, like, 10. He's the host, I'm every guest, and then my dad is Elton John. That was a Saturday night.
I'm not a political comic.
I didn't go to school for illustration. I did larger pieces, mostly drawings and paintings, and minored in video, but when I moved to N.Y.C., I didn't have a studio space anymore and downsized to my desk and started illustrating. I started a greeting card company and sold cards all over the city.
Art school can be a wonderful place if you're trying to find your voice and your style and your taste.
I love Maira Kalman. She's an amazing illustrator and writer. I've loved her since I was in college, but when I moved to New York and experienced the same city she was drawing and writing about, I developed a whole new appreciation. Her work made me observe everything so much deeper and more joyfully.
I really admire people that do more than one thing. That's sort of the goal, right - to be an artist that can work in any medium. That's what I hope for my career.
Everything on 'Broad City' that my character has drawn is my stuff from years and years ago.
It's very natural and simple to me, drawing, because I've drawn since I was a kid. It's just the most normal thing for me to do. And it's very meditative.
I really want to continue doing art. I would love to go back to doing paintings one day.
Sometimes the art world can be a scary place, and you feel like you should know more than you do, but it's okay to not know everything!
I find the most normal things about famous people to be the most fascinating.
I sometimes worry that maybe it's better to be really good at one thing than be okay at a couple things.
I find young people talk about what they want to do, which is great because you get to form the words, but its also like, you gotta just get in there.
I wasn't in the art world at all as a kid; I was just creative, and we were always doing arts and crafts.
I will say that a lot of art, some of the best art, has very powerful and meaningful messages behind it, and the more you read the stuff on the walls, the more you learn the artist's intention, and you have a totally new point of view of what it's about.
We live in such a celebrity-driven culture, but all those people have to go buy toilet paper, and all those people have products they use and their favorite sweet treats. They all have to write to-do lists, and they're all reading books - well, hopefully most people are doing those things.
If anything can be art, then anyone can be an artist.
Man, Amy Ryan. I have geeked out so hard for her - to her face! There aren't a lot of people that can cross those lines of drama and comedy so seamlessly as Amy Ryan.
I'm a big Sephora fan.