More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
And if you’re not totally satisfied, if you don’t feel that you’ve had a better life because of this book, check in again when you’re 102 and I’ll give you your money back. Now, some of you will die before you hit 102 and that’s on you. Just know that I would have made good.
Audiences keep comedians honest. An audience’s laughter is brutally honest. I can’t think of another art form like it. Is my painting any good? It’s hard to tell. Does my music connect? Maybe . . . Are my jokes funny? Well, did they laugh or not? It’s binary. The audience is comedy’s self-policing system.
With comedians, it’s a shorter feedback loop, meaning they get less attached to the results. So they get less stressed by failure.
I know who I am and I also know how I’m perceived. I think you need both.
As a society we crave stability, but really a crisis is just a point at which we change and move on.
What I’m saying is, you’re not crazy. Whatever you’re doing, you’re doing it for a good reason. But there might be a better way. You might smoke because you want to relax, but there are better ways to relax that involve less cancer, death and bad breath. Or you might work in a job you hate, because you feel you need the approval of others. That was me.
A man goes for a job interview. The interviewer, impressed with his résumé, asks, ‘What’s your greatest weakness?’ He replies, ‘My greatest weakness is honesty. I’m just too honest.’ The interviewer says, ‘I’m not sure you could really call honesty a weakness.’ He replies, ‘I don’t give a fuck what you think.’
The foundation stone has to be acceptance of reality and then you get to own that reality and choose your own adventure.
‘Practising honesty’ sounds like a philosophy preached by crunchy-granola-eating, sandal-wearing, electric-car-driving hippies. That said, I like the idea of owning your mistakes, correcting them and moving on to fulfil your purpose – and I now own an electric car. I’ll tell you how it happened. I’m in Westfield London. There is nothing I want to buy, I’m not hungry, I’ve just had a coffee and am mooching around waiting for my girl. And then I see it, the Tesla store – you can buy a car in the shopping mall now, great. I ask the salesman in the shop, ‘What’s the deal with the cars?’ And the
...more
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
There’s a point when you go with what you’ve got. Or you don’t go.
That’s the thing about being a black-out drunk: a distinct lack of detail.
The amount was never the problem; it was the reason behind it.
There is no ‘the truth’. And ‘the truth’ is not necessarily honest. When you enter into an argument, do not assume that you’re right, even if you feel strongly that you’re right. Assume you don’t have all the facts. Because that is ‘the truth’. Every motherfucking time. We’re all acting based on partial knowledge.
You eventually realise as you’re pottering around that inevitably if you’re right about God and Jesus, then everyone else is, well, wrong about their gods. The Christian way seems to be: ‘Have you heard the good news? Well, it’s not good news for you, Mohammed, Ishmail, Moshe and Aziz.’
Take the most religious guy in Catholicism. Let’s say the Pope. The Pope is famously Catholic. He doesn’t believe in Judaism, he doesn’t believe in Islam or Buddhism or Scientology. The most religious guy in the world thinks I’m right about atheism only with one exception.
It was the fact that Scientology was made up so recently that makes its lunacy more obvious.
When you lose your religion you lose God, yes, but you also lose the devil. Result. Hell, damnation, Dante’s inferno, being punished for all eternity, all of that shit that’s been shoved down your neck as a Catholic goes as well. And it’s quite freeing. You lose both salvation and damnation.
Like ‘I must be this way, because of that’, or ‘Because of my past, this will be my future’. You have certain expectations and habits.
Luckily, it’s all your fault. Even if it isn’t, it’s better to see it that way.
Van Halen famously used to request a brandy glass of M&M’s with all the brown ones picked out in their dressing room. The story has become a rock and roll legend, a tale of diva-like ridiculous requests and excess. Yet, there was method in Van Helen’s madness. It was to check that the concert promoter had fully read their contract. If there were no brown M&M’s, the band could trust the promoter, and they could relax. If they hadn’t bothered with that detail, if there were brown M&M’s backstage, the band knew that all the lighting and sound specifications had to be reviewed. The brown M&M’s
...more
People sneer at first-world problems, but what are you going to do? You can only deal with what’s in front of you. You know what they call self-help books in the third world?** Firewood. They need to eat, they’re not worried about any of this shit. First-world problems are important: am I good enough, am I fulfilling my potential? Third world problems are urgent: will I eat today, where is the safest place to sleep and how is my ongoing relationship with the secret police?
Disposition is as important as position. — Susan Sontag
There’s a huge debate on nature vs nurture. Frankly, it doesn’t matter: nature is very important, but if we’re dealing with just nature, then we might as well give up.
Don’t judge me by my past. I don’t live there any more. — Zig Ziglar
Whilst we’re talking cancel culture, could it be the new book burning? And if it is the new book burning, are you sure you want to be part of the pitchfork-wielding mob?
And cancel culture breaks the golden rule – do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
You can laugh about anything but not with anyone. – Pierre Desproges
Just like seeing lyrics is not the same as hearing a song.
Our aim, as comics, is laughs. What would be the point of offending an audience we haven’t met? Are you crazy? That’s our livelihood. We wouldn’t be able to survive.
Being offended on behalf of someone is bullshit. It’s virtue signalling and it’s condescending (condescending means patronising, like when you talk down to someone – you understand, right?).
And yes, my sense of humour is not for everyone. But to punch down, you have to be looking down. If you think I’m up high, then you also think the people I’ve made jokes about are down low. That’s on you.
That’s too terrible to joke about, is like saying that disease is too terrible to cure. – Louis CK
A distrust of wit is the beginning of tyranny. — Edward Abbey
Because it’s as necessary as all your other senses for survival and when you don’t have it, you’re at a disadvantage.
But suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
The pain you avoid with suicide doesn’t vanish, it merely gets redistributed around those that loved you.
Common sense and a sense of humour, are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humour, is just common sense, dancing.
That experience gave me a new rule for life: be a good foul-weather friend. The world is full of fair-weather friends.
The person who lights up the room doesn’t know they’re the source of the light; they just think rooms are bright. The particular magic you have, you probably don’t know you have, because the impression you give is not about how you feel. I have met a lot of beautiful people and they do not go around feeling beautiful. What they feel is self-conscious because everyone is staring at them and acting weird.
Careers advisers – what the actual fuck? You talk about your Monday morning quarterback. They don’t know you well enough to know what you should do with your edge. Seriously, the only thing a careers adviser should say is: ‘I’m sorry, I’ve got to go, I’ll be back when I’ve sorted my own life out. I may be gone some time.’
It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled. – Mark Twain
Work on your strengths and when you can, as soon as possible, delegate your weaknesses. Pick what you find easy and focus on that – get great at that. That’s what edge is.
Hanlon’s razor: never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Every expert I’ve ever met has always said, ‘Well, it’s complicated.’ And every person I’ve met with an opinion in a pub has said, ‘It’s simple, let me explain . . .’ This is the Dunning–Kruger effect, where people overestimate their abilities.
Role models are more useful than heroes, because you can actually have conversations with them.
Luck is also about showing up. I’m lucky, I was in the right place at the right time. Where was I when I was ‘discovered’? In a comedy club working. How often was I there? All the fucking time.
The reason it’s hard to think clearly in stressful situations has to do with cortisol, which floods our system and interferes with our capacity to think straight.
Critics of mass culture have a trick of weighing the worst of the present with the best of the past. — John Gross
