Marc Maron

I think that standup has always been an acquired taste and there was always only a handful of performers that were really inspired.

I’m not completely sure we aren’t all living in a hallucination now.

The bile makes it better. I am an information wasting machine – 100s of words a day.

Have you ever had one of those moments when you look up and realize that you’re one of those people you see on the train talking to themselves?

For my next trick I will make everyone understand me.

Left wing, right wing, I am wingless and tired of trying to fly. Here comes the ground.

On some level any appearance on Television can be seen as a product endorsement.

Comedy is obviously a matter of personal taste and the world always needs a clown and some people have no taste at all and any clown will do.

As a performer you are being used to keep people watching so the commercial endorsements that support the network can be seen by as many people as possible.

Surveillance induced morality: relics of cultural retardation.

It’s easy to maintain your integrity when no one is offering to buy it out.

When I was a young kid I loved Don Rickles, Buddy Hackett and Jackie Vernon.

The demand for standup in the eighties was created by how easy it was to exploit ‘comedians’ and create very cheap television programming.

Jerusalem Syndrome is actually a rare psychological condition that occurs to some visitors to the Middle East. They get to Israel and just snap.

In the sixties and seventies you could probably name all the great comics. It was still special.

I think seeing Pryor’s first movie, Live In Concert, when I was in high school changed my life. Pryor really put the heart in darkness for me.

When I was a bit older I had all of the George Carlin records, all of the Steve Martin records, all of the Cheech and Chong records and all of the Richard Pryor records.

The next evolutionary step is into the screen.

I didn’t know that people compared Bill Hicks and I but certainly I’m flattered if they do. I knew Bill a bit. We had dinner a couple of times and played guitar together once. I really tried to keep my distance from him professionally.

We need the children of Indonesia and the Philippines to manufacture our freedom of choice.

There are also always those burnt, hard kernels at the bottom that don’t pop. You know why they don’t pop? They don’t pop because they have integrity.

Show business is one of the few businesses that the devil will actually agree to own just a portion of your soul because he knows if you have a performer’s ego you were probably working for him all along.

The Internet has usurped the collective unconscious and access to cosmic consciousness has become difficult and almost primitive.

I was also a big Woody Allen fan. When I got into college I listened to Lenny Bruce but it’s taken me years to put him into context historically and really get what he did.

It may have lost its special-ness forever and the clubs might not being doing well but I think standup is in the best shape it has been in a long time.

The development of the comedy club industry destroyed the uniqueness and intimacy of the profession but it also created jobs for comics and bred some great performers.

It seems people are more willing to let other people control their minds now and recreational drug use doesn’t seem to have that same renegade sense of adventure that it once did.

Is it hard to make a living in show business? Yeah.

I’m sad to see the passing of the great drug warriors. I certainly did my part in that battle and I don’t regret any of it.

When you actually meet the devil and he offers you a deal most artists eventually negotiate.

Hopefully standup will become special again.