Jerry Seinfeld Quotes

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.

Should I mention the other shows that were on at [the same time as Seinfeld]? 'Unsolved Mysteries'? 'Alf'? Where are they? Why is there no Hulu deal for them?

No soup for you

Monkeys have contributed a lot to society in their way. They were the first astronauts in the Sixties. Which I'm sure made perfect sense in the monkey brain. "I see, so instead of the little bellhop uniform, you want me to get into a rocket and orbit the earth at supersonic speed. Yeah, I think that is the next logical step for me."

[George is] like the kind of guy that you hang around with in New York who's not in the [stand-up] business, but he's been your friend for a long time and you're just kind of-- In the important ways, you're too similar to ever not be friends. [...] Even though your lives are in completely different places, the friendship survives, 'cause in the important ways of shallowness and neurotic exploration of meaningless detail: that's where you bonded.

I think we [comedians] deal with fear more viscerally than almost anyone! I mean, you feel the audience's fear, your own fear. The whole show is about quelling fear!

If you can walk to work or take your bike on a daily basis, I think that's just about the coolest thing that there is. Every morning I listen to the traffic [report] on the radio, and they talk about how they are jammed and I just laugh.

A [stand-up] bit is a bar of gold. A talk-show panel story is something that's too good to throw out but not good enough to use.

There was a tone we set with the writing staff -- that Larry set -- that it had to be original; it had to be unique. It-- it had to be something very funny and very fresh.

Frankly, I don't think people think of their office as a workplace anyway. I think they think of it as a stationery store with Danish. You want to get your pastry, your envelopes, your supplies, your toilet paper, six cups of coffee, and you go home.

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

All I had to do was do [stand-up] once, and I didn't-- Really, success wasn't my objective; it was just "I wanna be one of those guys!" If I can be one of those guys, I'm-- I win everything!

Don't you hate "To Be Continued"s on TV? [...] I mean the whole reason you watch a TV show is because it ends. If I wanted a long, boring story with no point to it, I've got my life.

Sometimes I want to go back to the old flip phone. One of those old-people ones that they advertise on TV with the giant buttons like floor tiles.

Remember when you were in school and they'd do those hearing tests? [...] I wanted to do unbelievable on the hearing test. I wanted them to come over to me and go, "We think you may have something close to super-hearing. What you heard was a cotton ball touching a piece of felt. We're sending the results to Washington, we'd like you to meet the President."