Jerry Seinfeld on Knowledge

"When you hear a curse word in the last line of bit... that's when you know: "not solved." "That puzzle was not solved."

"The guy on stage: I made that up. The real me is alone, in the room; that's who I am. I learned that-- the skill of people."

"The less you know about a field, the better your odds. Dumb boldness is the best way to approach a new challenge."

"Twenty minutes is not comedy. An hour, an hour and fifteen minutes: that's comedy, y'know? You learn how to open, how to sustain, how to pace."

"Do you know the first thing I said as a child, before I said "Mama" or "Dada"? I said "Leave me alone!" Is that not the mantra of stand-up comedy?"

"kind of like catching bullets between your teeth. If you're gonna do it right, it would be something to learn it and then not make a career out of it."

"I don't know why people always assume that the guest is more interesting than the host."

"It might be fun to see what it's like to run something into the ground. I missed out on that. I'm curious about it. I want to know what it's like for everyone else."

"Learning to be a writer is the delta of success and failure in comedy."

"Dogs are broke their entire lives. And you know why they have no money? No pockets! They have no pockets. They see change on the street, there is nothing they can do about it."

"The worst advice is, you know, you have to do more to promote yourself. That's the worst advice. The best advice is to do your work, and you won't have to worry about anything else."

"Most comedians do not relate to cars. I don't know why."

"How did they know that there would be a need for a frosted, fruit-filled, heatable rectangle in the same shape as the box it comes in, and with the same nutrition as the box it comes in?"

"Maybe comets killed the dinosaurs, maybe they tripped and fell. What's the difference? We'll never know. We couldn't solve the Kennedy Assassination, we had films of that. Good luck with the Stegosaurus."

"Pain is knowledge rushing in to fill a gap. When you stub your toe on the foot of the bed, that was a gap in knowledge. And the pain is a lot of information really quick. That's what pain is."

"You know that tremendous feeling of power, when your phone is fully charged? And somebody calls, and you go "I want to hear every detail of this story! I am loaded with juice!" That's what TM is."

"Stand-up is now easy to learn, harder to master because once you get halfway decent at it, you can do other things. And if you do one other thing, you're not gonna get good at it; it's just too damn hard."

"Comedy is a bit of a masochistic pursuit. If you don't have a masochistic streak, I don't think you can succeed at it, 'cause so much of it is painful. You have to kind of like it, in a sick way: y'know, that this really hurts."

"Audiences love to hear about something very stupid. Y'know? But I impose kind of an-- a very rigorous intellect to it. It's kind of philosophical, that joke about the-- y'know, "If it was really donut holes, the bag would be empty."

"I always felt like I was very much a "hook"-less comedian, and that I would always be hook-less. And that-- I thought "Maybe that's my hook!" Y'know? That I just don't have anything that you latch onto as "He's the guy who does this" or "looks like this."

"That's other big advice to me: "easy". I don't know what the hell that means. Every time we lift up something heavy, he goes "Easy now! Take it easy! Easy! Easy!" It's not easy; it's very difficult. Okay? You want easy? Leave it here in the hallway. That's easy."

"Stories about your children are not good stories. They're not interesting, amusing, or relatable. That took me a long time to learn. And a lot-- I have a lot of friends with kids that don't know it: what happened with your kid this morning at breakfast is not funny."

"There was incredible amount of luck -- good luck -- that I had, that made what it was. On the other hand, I could argue against that. I could say "I'm the one who said to Larry David: 'Y'know, when you and I talk, it's really funny. We should write something together'."

"Stand-up comedy's also the most mysterious profession in show business. It's completely shrouded in mystery of "How do these people do it?" Only other comedians understand it. It's like, y'know, being a cop or a prostitute: you can only hang out with other people do that."

"When the Beatles ended, it was so sudden, and it made what they did somehow more valuable. 'Cause it-- just suddenly, it was over, and that's it. That's the complete set. Y'know? Nine years, twelve albums, whatever it is: that's it. So, I kind of took from that "I want to try and do that."

"I always, y'know, idolized people like Bill Cosby and people that were just themselves. I mean, I think the idea of a comedian as someone that you relate to-- I think "comedy star" is almost an oxymoron. You don't look up to comedians like you look at Madonna or, y'know, Elvis, or people like that."

"Once this Pop Tart had come into the world, I didn't understand why we were still eating other kinds of food. 'Cause this seemed to be definitely the new way. Two in the packet and two slots in the toaster. 'Why two?' One's not enough; three's too many. And they can't go stale, 'cause they were never fresh."

"It is not easy to find someone who you can say to "That's not funny", and they're not gonna get upset. Y'know? Really hard to do that. Most comedians are very defensive, very protective of their stuff. And even if you may be a person of accomplishment, they don't want to hear that. They don't want to hear from anybody!"

"Men and women will never understand each other; we all know that. It's just not gonna happen; just forget it. I know I will not understand women. I know I will never be able to understand how a woman could take boiling hot wax, pour it on her upper thighs, rip the hair out by the root... and still be afraid of a spider."

"You know how the old people drive? They drive slow, they sit low. That is their motto. The state flag of Florida should be just a steering wheel with a hat and two knuckles on it. And then that left turn signal on from when they left the house that morning. That's a legal turn in Florida: it's known as an eventual left."