Brian Regan
I would have been a lot better off if I’d studied more when I was growing up, y’know. But you know where it all went wrong was the day they started the spelling bee. Because up until that day I was an idiot, but nobody else knew.Collection: Growing Up
Just make sure you're staying true to yourself, and do what you think is good in that craft or field [of yours] and then let everything else fall where it falls.Collection: Fall
Be adaptable, flexible and never stop learning. The rate of change will never stop and neither should you.Collection: Should
I think comedy is a good way to deal with anything. I hear about people in the hospital who are ill, and they use humor to help them through it. I think it's a great remedy for many things.Collection: Thinking
Can you imagine being bilingual? Or even knowing anybody that was? I'm not even unilingual. Actually, I shouldn't say that. I don't give myself enough credit. I know enough English to, you know, get by. I can order in restaurants and stuff.Collection: Order
Mmmm! Lunch and no cleanup! Can life get better? I submit that it can NOT!Collection: Lunch
I went to the juice isle, I learned something. Cranberries are taking over everything. What do you got, apples? Put some cranberrise in there, make it 50/50. Cran-apple. Grapes? Cran-grape. Mangos? Cran-mango. Pork chops? Cran-chop!Collection: Apples
I could go for a sandwich, but I’m not gonna open two jars.Collection: Two
I just tend to think about everyday things for my onstage act. Actually you know what I like to talk about just the absolute most - the more mundane the subject matter, the more interesting it is to me.Collection: Thinking
Many comedians consider themselves to be cutting edge. But why do we have to use the knife for the analogy. Let's use the spoon. I like to consider myself the big bowl-like area of the spoon that holds all the stuff you like.Collection: Cutting
Hooked on Phonics worked for me.Collection: Hooked
I'm always excited about my upcoming shows. I love what I do; I feel very lucky to be able to do what I do, and I never get tired of it. Every time I'm backstage before a show and I feel the murmur of the crowd, it's just incredibly exciting. And I consider myself very fortunate to be able to do this for a job. It's a great life.Collection: Jobs
I'm actually kinda quiet off stage, a lotta people don't realize that. I was at a dinner party recently, a bunch of people that I don't know, one guy talking plenty for everybody. "Me myself right and then I and then myself and mee, me, I couldn't tell this one about I cause I was talking about myself and Me- Meee- Mee- Me- Me!" Beware the Me monster.Collection: Party
Like, I'm trying to make a statement that clean comedy is somehow better or loftier than dirty comedy, and I don't feel that way at all. I just think it's different. It's different. There's rock music, there's jazz music, there's reggae music: All of those forms are different.Collection: Dirty
You see weird things driving... I've never understood log trucks. Sometimes you'll be out on the highway, you see two big giant trucks loaded up with logs, and they pass each other on the highway... I don't understand that. I mean, if they need logs over there... and they need 'em over there, you'd think a phone call would save 'em a whole lot of trouble.Collection: Mean
I'm trying to do things I have never done. Like I recently went to 3 different ballets. And I loved trying to learn how to like those a little bit.Collection: Trying
How come they don't think you can handle a new story out of the blue on the TV news? They gotta make a little lame segue. "Hey, that's a big lotto jackpot! Speaking of lotto, there was a lot o' crime in the city today."Collection: Funny
I go in for the eye test, and I don't know about you, but I concentrate like crazy during the eye exam. You don't want to get no 'D' on that thing and end up with these big thick Coke bottle glasses.Collection: Crazy
When you're onstage, it's a communication technique when you make people laugh. You're communicating. You're communicating with other human beings and when they laugh you know that you're connecting. Laughing is an honest reaction and it's something that I can trust, and I love that feeling of knowing that I connected.Collection: Communication
I eat like a kid. I like Chief Boyardee. Their Ravioli, but they have some stuff I've never seen in the real Italian food world. You ever been in a nice Italian restaurant? Hi how are you? Ummm id like to start with a nice bottle of Chanti and a couple of Caesar Salads and umm I'm going to have the Beef a'ronni. And some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the lady.Collection: Couple
You know I could go for a sandwich, but uh, I'm not gonna open TWO jars! I can't be opening and closing all kinds of jars... cltaning, who KNOWS how many knives!?Collection: Knives
I wanted to do the comic strip. I tried to get it syndicated, and I sent some examples to a syndication company, and they sent me a rejection letter! I wasn't smart enough at the time to realize you shouldn't let rejection letters stop you. I thought that rejection letter meant I was not allowed to be a cartoonist in this world, so I put the rejection letter down and said, well, I'll be a stand-up comedian.Collection: Smart
I try to be careful and put things in perspective. There are people who have challenging lives and work hard physically and mentally. I consider myself a lucky person because I get to go on stage and tell jokes for an hour. If I miss a connection here and there or my room isn't ready now and then? It's not a big deal.Collection: Hard Work
You can poke fun at some pretty difficult circumstances, and it's just a way to pop the bubble. I don't do that thing onstage usually, but offstage sometimes I might.Collection: Fun
I eat Fig Newtons by the sleeve.Collection: Newton
Superhero power... I probably would just want to fly. I definitely would not want to be able to see through walls. I think walls are there for a reason. People put them up for a reason. You don't want to be looking through them. That would only cause nothing but misery and angst to know what's happening behind people's walls.Collection: Wall
I like the honesty of standup comedy. People don't fake laugh. If they're truly laughing at you, you know they like you.Collection: Honesty
The bigger the show, the weirder it is.Collection: Bigger
Even though I have fond feelings for comedy clubs, I enjoy the focus you get in a theater. Comedy clubs are a different animal. People are being served nachos and there's a blender going off in the background.Collection: Animal
I think the most horrible name for a crime has to be manslaughter. ... "I slaughtered a man! Just like a pig! Put him on a spit and put an apple in his mouth!"Collection: Funny
Some people look at creamed corn and ask, 'Why?' I look at creamed corn and ask, 'Why not?'Collection: People
It means a lot to me to have my kids like what I do. And that's why I limit them. But I don't want to put that pressure on them to be a fan of mine.Collection: Mean
I'm honored that other comedians like what I do. That means the world to me. But at the same time when I'm on stage I'm not just trying to make the comedians laugh - I'm also trying to make the audience laugh. I want to make everybody laugh.Collection: Mean
So when you do board, the first class people, they're sitting there. A lot of them are working as your boarding. They have computers out and calculators. They're looking up at you like, Hey, we're making money right now!Collection: Class
I have a friend who swears by food combinations - have you heard of this nonsense? She's nuts. She's like, 'You know what? You should eat food combinations, and that way you can eat whatever you want. It's just the combinations of how you put the food together.' And then her examples are like, 'You wouldn't want to eat steak and potatoes together, but you could have, like, a lemon rind and raisin skins - not the whole raisin, take the skins and steam them.Collection: Nuts
Sometimes you'll play, like, a large venue - maybe an outdoor venue or something - where it's so big that you can see all of the disinterested people. You see the audience, but then behind the audience you see people eating ice cream, going for a walk.Collection: Ice Cream
I don't always see humor in things. Especially when I smash my pinky toe into a coffee table leg in the middle of the night. But sometimes I'll see things, or experience things, that make me go, "Huh, maybe that's a bit."Collection: Coffee
A lot of the kind of comedy that I do comes out of real human moments. For them to work, they have to be truthful kinds of things that people in the audience can go, "Yes, I've experienced that myself!"Collection: Real
The only way I'd want to do something in television would be if it was about how I think as a comedian. I'd need to be able to be a creator. That's what I enjoy - I enjoy coming up with comedy, so it'd be very difficult for me to be sitting in a room and have somebody come in and say, "Here's your script! Learn these lines!" That's not fun. At least not for me.Collection: Fun
I try my jokes onstage. The only way to really find out if something is going to work is to try it on stage, and I try to be careful and bookend something new with a strong bit before and a strong bit afterwards. But it's fun to run on virgin snow. I like that feeling onstage of creating new footprints and not knowing what's going to happen.Collection: Running
If a movie makes it really big, they do the obvious thing, right? They make an amusement park ride out of it. ... The connection is obvious. You get off, "Man, that was just like the movie! Only the movie had a storyline and characters, and that was a little more like a roller coaster."Collection: Funny
Relevance is kind of a weird thing. If one does topical material, it makes sense to want to be relevant. But if someone talks about donut sprinkles, it's not quite as important. Unless the U.S. Supreme Court makes a decision outlawing donut sprinkles.Collection: Decision