Pete Holmes
What I don't think I knew when I was young was that 'losing your faith' is actually part of the plan for a lot of people - that it's actually maybe the most beautiful and graceful thing that can happen. The mystery of God can handle all of it. It can handle all of your thoughts, all of your doubts, all of your folly. It's all in the game.Collection: Faith
People like Bill Burr and Jim Gaffigan and Zach Galifianakis and Sarah Silverman - they were all amazing and helpful to me.Collection: Amazing
My mom wanted me to be a youth pastor, and when I became a comedian, she said it was close enough.Collection: Mom
There's nothing you can do to increase or decrease the love that God has for you, but there are things you can do that increase or decrease your awareness of that love. That's certainly been my experience.Collection: Experience
Joy is in learning to say yes to what is and to surrender into flow with what is, even when it's what you don't want.Collection: Learning
I needed to let go of the idea of a God who was mad at me for feeling how I was feeling. Now, I bask in an understanding of the divine that delights in truth and the complexities of the human experience - even when it's not very 'clean.'
Traffic: Sit there. Sit. Occasionally move your foot from the brake and crawl forward, then put it back. That's all you do for hours. It's very calming.
I'm not going to have the TV personality and be like, 'There's no bitterness. There's no ugliness.' There's bitterness. There's ugliness. There's pain. There's greed. There's malice, and there's hurt. That's all good stuff for any kind of art. I'm not necessarily feeding that side of myself, and I try not to encourage it too much.
I think there's something so funny about Ram Dass. I was lucky enough to sit across from him at dinner once, and I got up the courage to tell him that he was my favorite comedian. Even though he's not a comic, he talks about showbiz in a certain way and understands that there's a presentation to it.
I'll admit that I'm self-centered - all of us are - but I can also be external and giving and listening and empathetic and all that sort of stuff.
I thought divorce was for people that threw plates at each other, and I'd have to be an alcoholic or having affairs. But the truth is, sometimes a very sweet, well-meaning person just doesn't do it for you, and you need to get out of there.
The only Batman that doesn't need parodying is Adam West, but everybody else is fair game.
We'd all like to increase pleasure and minimize pain, but the truth is, suffering, even collective suffering that we're going through, is often the earmark that some real change is happening.
When you slide into television, no one tells you exactly how manage expectations and work with your staff.
When it comes to being called a pronoun, sometimes I like to call other people 'me.' I go, like, 'Oh, these mes voted for Trump. This me is begging for change. This me is driving me to the airport.' I find that useful instead of going, like - because it's so pleasant to go 'you.'
It's hard to control the things that are going to inspire you.
There are elements of comedy that can be competitive and back stab-y, but one of the underreported sides is that we love each other and help each other, kind of like a messed up extended family.
I booked an E-Trade commercial. That's a lucrative gig.
When I look at what's happening with #MeToo, my heart breaks, basically, for everybody involved.
I hate when pastors have a gay son and then they become pro-gay.
We can give space to someone's depression. We can love them; we can honor - we can just eat some noodles, we can watch some movies, whatever it is. We can just sit and not talk. That's real stuff. It's a real - I don't know if you call it a disorder, a disease, but it's happening, and we don't need to coach people through with ideologies.
So we have the story of who we are. I'm a man, and I'm a comedian, and I'm a tall man. I have big teeth and all these things, and I like the first two Batman movies, and I don't drink coffee, or whatever it is.
I can't speak for everybody. But I will say that for me, when I've been depressed - and I get depressed. I have irrational bouts of anxiety. I have random FedEx deliveries of despondency. Just like, 'I didn't order this. Oh, well, keep the PJs on, cancel everything you're doing today. It's time to take a sad shower.'
Why do we say 'Have a great weekend?' That's just a spell. You're just going - I have no control over your weekend. But words matter. They change our interior world. Have a great weekend.
Religion often is very embarrassing, and I totally get it. So I am sort of sometimes burdened with the fact that I love talking about it with anybody. Not just religious people.
I really love the Frank Miller 'Year One' stuff.
I love 'Year One.' I read 'Year One' over and over again.
If I open a Batman book, and he doesn't look right, I can't do it. It has so much to do with the art.
Good comedy can be liberating, and if I'm doing my job as a comedian, part of the joy for the audience is getting that release.
Sometimes I liken the comedian's lifestyle a little bit to a firefighter's in the sense that there's a lot of waiting and a lot of nothingness. And then there are moments of urgent firefighting.
The biggest idea of a good time for me is making the Batman videos that we did. That is my ideal day. That is exactly what I want to be doing... I like doing cartoons. I like writing things.
When I was in junior high, I went to a really hippy dippy Quaker school where we called our teachers by their first names and stuff.
My wife left me when I was 28 in real life.
I used to just want so badly to have afterlife insured and make sure I was going to heaven.
I saved my money.
Yeah, I had a talk show canceled. Okay, let's go back to the list of people who had talk shows canceled. Johnny Carson had his first talk show canceled. Jon Stewart. Letterman. Conan O'Brien, if you look at 'The Tonight Show' as a show that got canceled.
As soon as I heard the term 'comedy nerd,' I'd hoped there was a lot of them.
I mostly do faces and sounds. That's what I do. Comedy doesn't have to be art.
Literally, my honeymoon was driving to Chicago.
I'm the weirdo that tells - asks - the Uber driver to please turn the radio down. I'm so polite about it, though.
I knew I wanted a 'Girls'-type show about my life, but what's the big thing that happened to me? Oh, I got married when I was young.
I'm not religious anymore, but I was raised religious.
I always wanted to do something about what it's like to get divorced, especially when it's a young marriage to start with.
When I got divorced, the first people I called were Nick Kroll and John Mulaney and T. J. Miller - all the pals.
I remember talking to comedian Jimmy Pardo about his experience waiting to hear about his own pilot, and we both agreed on one thing: When you can't control your showbiz fate, you can at least control the amount of ice cream you're eating. And if you're like us, it was a lot.
The world is so mysterious, and there's so many social interactions where I have no idea what I'm supposed to do - what's being asked of me, what's expected of me.
I think 'everything sucks' is too often leaned upon as a comedic stance. It's a really easy and pretty weak perspective.
A stand-up act is almost like a pool. You know what I mean? It's like a pool, and you're always skimming little leaves out of it, messing with the chlorine level, putting up umbrellas. You're trying to make one little stagnant body of water perfect. Whereas a late-night show is like a river, always moving forward.
I wanted to be a pastor. I was going to be a youth pastor. I mean, I play guitar; I like to make people laugh.
The skill set of pastor and comedian are incredibly similar. You want to affect people. You're good at reading rooms. You're persuasive, and you're likable.