Jerry Seinfeld Quotes

You know the message you're sending out to the world with these sweatpants? You're telling the world, 'I give up. I can't compete in normal society. I'm miserable, so I might as well be comfortable.

I like that [obituaries] boil the whole guy's life down to "Invented the ballpoint-pen spring".

I don't know if the average person would like [being famous]. I really like it. I think it might surprise them that the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. I think most people think of it as a problem, but it's all in how you look at it. But I do think that's the case, you get a lot more than it costs you in privacy invasion or whatever.

[Stand-up is] a martial art. It's voice, it's action, it's gesture; and everything is synchronized to land on that [weakest] point. You ever watch these karate guys? They hit that brick: it's a perfect arrow that hits that target, and when it-- and it's perfect! It's a concentration of energy. And that's what elicits the laugh.

If you give someone a 50, it's a big "thing" now, where they check it quite a bit. And it's like "Well, I used it! Why can't you use it?" We're all just kind of going along with this "paper has value" scam. Right?

Nobody goes berserk eating in the morning. You never wake up in the morning and eat a decent breakfast, and then attack a box of brownies. You don't do it. But at night, we all do it! Why? We're tired. And when you're tired, your willpower goes away. Willpower requires energy.

If I want a long boring story with no point to it, I have my life.

I saw a thing, actually-- a study that said: speaking in front of a crowd is considered the #1 fear of the average person. I found that amazing! #2 was death. Death is #2? This means, to the average person, if you have to be at a funeral, you would rather be in the casket than doing the eulogy.

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.

I'm a little compulsive-- a compulsive tinkerer. Y'know? I love to just "Well, let's try this, and maybe shrink that section a little bit." I mean, that's what stand-up is, is constantly moving the accordion to different sizes.

You may have noticed that I tend to quit things soon after doing them, like TV series, animated movies, book writing, broadway plays. I do feel very strongly in stopping the second I feel like I'm not excited anymore, whatever I'm doing.

The real motivation of being a comedian is if you really love the sound of a laugh.

No soup for you

When it's your name on the goddamn show... the pressure is-- it's intense! And then, the show got successful, and everybody expected each week to be even better than the last, and it was a lot of pressure. And I loved every second of it, but it was a lot of pressure and a lot of work, and it was all great, but: never could have accomplished it without [Transcendental Meditation].

When you want to enjoy something, you must never let logic get too much in the way.