Chris Hardwick Quotations

Videogames make you feel like you're actually doing something. Your brain processes the tiered game achievements as real-life achievements. Every time you get to the next level, hot jets of reward chemical coat your brain in a lathery foam, and it seems like you're actually accomplishing stuff.

I think for a lot of people, bowling is sort of a joke. But I love it, and it means a lot to me, so any chance to help promote it or celebrate it or not make the hackiest jokes - 'Bowlers are like plumbers and they wear the craziest shirts!' - I'm way into.

For me personally, I have a fear of, 'If I stop, I'm going to die.' If I stop doing the things that are enriching to me or creatively exciting to me or if I stop creating, then I feel stagnant. If something isn't growing, it's dying.

Every year on my birthday, I start a new playlist titled after my current age so I can keep track of my favorite songs of the year as a sort of musical diary because I am a teenage girl.

I think when I look out and I see there's so much negativity in the world and a lot of people are unhappy and a lot people are anxious, it just feels like that's one view of the world. But you don't have to always focus on that view of the world.

Comic-Con is nerd Christmas. People go wanting to have fun.

While the liberal media elite depict the bowler as a chubby guy with a comb-over and polyester pants, the reality is that bowling is one of the most tech-heavy sports today. Robotic pinsetters and computerized scoring were just the beginning.

I had a personal blog, but why does anyone care that I went shopping for hats?

We're not in an information age anymore. We're in the information management age.

In the end, all that time I spent in the 'Star Wars' universe fostered galaxies of creativity and made me a better person here on Earth, because it taught me that everyone counts. That's why I can sincerely and with a straight face say: 'May the Force be with you.'

Freelancers are 'free' because they take risks - they don't like being told what to do. That's both exciting and daunting, because you have to police you.

Any nerd who grew up around the time that I did, BBC programming was a treasure chest for us.

Traditionally nerd-based culture is now a big sector of pop culture.

I think being an outcast is what sort of strengthens the nerd movement, because you're isolated, so you have time.

My best friend, Wil Wheaton, identifies himself as a geek.

It's funny: when I first started getting vocal about how much I liked 'Doctor Who,' I didn't realize how deep the fan base was.

I've gone from being bullied by jocks as a kid to being bullied by nerds as an adult.

If you can build your career around your passions, then you're winning in life; that's one of the best things you can ask for.

Comic-Con is interesting because there's so much going on at once, it's literally impossible to do everything. You need clones and some sort of hoverboard so you can surf over the crowd of packed-in nerds.

Even before I had an assistant, my calendar was color-coded and I had all these different e-mail rules for how to prioritize e-mails, so I made it a point years ago to figure all that stuff out because my life was a mess.

My father was one of the greatest professional bowlers of all time. Seriously. Billy Hardwick: PBA Hall of Fame, Player of the Year in '63 and '69, and the first winner of the triple crown of bowling, among other things.

When you first start working, you take whatever job is offered, because you have to build your resume. But you don't think about what you're building.

Real philosophy is like trying to read an alarm system installation manual in Korean.

Comedy has sort of been my life-long obsession. I literally obsessed over comedy. I really didn't play sports - for me it was just comedy, computers and chess club; those were my big things.

I do find some of the meanest, most exclusionary people are the nerds. And they rebel against other nerds! What are you doing? As much as I love nerds and the nerd movement, the nerd-on-nerd violence is really bad. A lot of times, nerds are the meanest ones online. And also, the trolling can be very extensive because they're smart.

I got more recognized for that commercial (Miller Makes It Right!) than any tournament I won, ... The 1960s was the glamour decade for bowling. We got as much attention and money as any sport. And there were no helmets, so we were easily recognizable and would get stopped everywhere.

I can't make up for the 10 years I missed, but I'm trying not to miss any more. I was the best bowler in the world for eight years and had as good a career as anyone who ever played the game. I've been a very fortunate person.

Well, you know he was just being nice. That was the only steak I had that year.

You don't need 30 million people to listen to your podcast. If 10,000 people listen to your podcast, which is not a hard number to achieve, then 10,000 people are listening, and you can build a community, and literally change the world just recording into a microphone.

We're doing what we do now because we like it and it's fun,

To this day, there is nothing about Rebecca I don't like,

Everything changed - my life, my priorities, my values,

It took away my desire and will to be the best bowler in the world,

No human ever became interesting by not failing. The more you fail and recover and improve, the better you are as a person. Ever meet someone who's always had everything work out for them with zero struggle? They usually have the depth of a puddle. Or they don't exist.

It's very easy to attack ourselves. Even comforting in its familiarity, but you must resist this urge at all costs. Dwelling on the past or your perceived flaws will do nothing but keep you under emotional house arrest and hamper your progress. Commit yourself to growth and reward yourself with kindness for choosing to do so!

When I was younger, my parents used to say, "Trust us on this. We have more experience than you." And I was like, "Shut up, you don't know anything!" But I was an idiot. They did know more stuff because they'd experienced more things.

When you don't take an aggressive role in shaping your thoughts, feelings, and perceptions, you become a helpless passenger floating through the universe like a ghost ship, merely reacting to wherever it takes you.

If you're able to build from your falls you'll be unstoppable and damn near fearless. You see, every time you fall down and get back up, you add another piece of body armor to yourself. You learn what not to do, how to do better, and how to create comfort through practice.

Bowling is all physics and energy distribution. It's F = ma. So it is actually one of the most science-y sports, because it literally is just a ball and a surface and objects to knock down.

I'm not fun to bowl with. I take it way too seriously. I have high expectations for myself.

I do seem like the kind of guy who'd be obsessive about Rubik's Cubes.

I honestly think hipsters eat with their assholes because they consume everything wrong.

No matter what tricks you use or what decisions you make, go easy on yourself as someone who's on a never-ending quest for improvement.

I don't know if the podcast as a medium will ever have the cultural impact that TV and movies do. It may never be super-mainstream.

When you hang around a lot of comedians long enough, you realize there's a certain gene, in every comedian. It's why we get hyper-analytical about things.

Being constructively critical is good, as long as your purpose is to improve your methods for future endeavors. Lying in bed and replaying failures and telling yourself you're stupid is a tremendous disservice to your efforts and what you can offer the world.

There's something about shooting webs out of my wrists and climbing up things that just makes me happy.

I've seen nerdists make tributes to their obsessions out of Legos that are like works of art. It just goes to show you how pervasive this stuff has become in our culture. It really is an ideology that you can subscribe to now.

When I was in school, if you wanted a computer, you had to build one. But today, computers are everywhere. We're all obsessed with technology and having the latest gadgets. Nerd culture is ubiquitous.

Steal moments of happiness if you have to, and then collect them until they are the dominant images in your psyche.

Stand up straight. If you stand up straight, you will instantly feel better about yourself, and you will project a better image to the world, one that says you don't feel like you have to be hunched over and closed off.

I spent a lot of time bowling as a kid, mostly because I grew up in bowling alleys. They were kind of my playgrounds.

Humans cannot produce viable offspring with our closest animal cousin: the chimpanzee. We cannot impregnate a chimp. So you know what that means? No condoms.

All television is an advertisement - that's why it exists. It wasn't the art-form first and then the commerce - it was that they could put on entertainment long enough to distract people into looking at products. It's for focusing people on advertising and separating you from money in some way. Some people forget that. The side product is that we get some great eye candy. TV is the best it has ever been right now. I don't have a problem with that since it's what keep us employed.

I think the mistake a lot of people make with new media is they just focus on one thing. But any one thing - just doing podcasts or just having a website or just doing television - isn't enough anymore.

I don't know if I'm a Twitter addict. That seems kind of harsh. I would say it's more that I'm seriously involved. That it's a long-term relationship - like a girlfriend, which my actual girlfriend loves to hear.

With stand-up, there's a little bit of an exaggerated reality because things have to be manipulated to create comedy, to create jokes.

I hate to say it, but because of humanity's capitalistic nature, money is important.

I think because we're ourselves, we tend to think we're unique. 'I have problems that are just specific to me.' Then you connect with one of your parents and you realize, 'Oh yeah, we had all that stuff, too.' You're not that original. I mean, in a good way, because it makes you feel like you're connected and a part of the world and not an island.

Our mandate at Nerdist is that we only get involved with nice people around things that we love. We have the luxury of being in the demographic that we're programming for.

If you're going into stand-up, you're hyper-analyzing the world and asking as many questions about a thing as you possibly can so you can figure out the ultimate nature of that thing.

Steve Martin said that philosophy is good for comedy because it screws up your thinking just enough, and I agree with that. Being forced to see life's metadata is good training for looking for interesting angles on a topic.

When comedians get successful, the fans that they have aren't the fans they would hang out with. I don't have that problem.

Fleetwood Mac is just one of my all-time favorite bands.

I would say that nerds, as a rule, are much more sexually active than the average person. There's a lot of anxiety and stress in the nerd brain, so sex is good for that.

There are certain parts of a classic nerd's brain that can destroy that person - obsessing about things to the detriment of everything else in your life. But those are the same tools that you can use to turn everything around.

Be offended by everything or be offended by nothing.

There's a lot of laughing on a horror movie set. They're magical in that way.

If you wish to achieve any success in this life, do your best to surround yourself with an orgy of good choices.

There's no ironic appreciation of things we love, even of things that are in fact ridiculous, which a hipster might take and own and show the world the humor in it.

If you do a joke that's really old, then what happens is people on Reddit and Twitter just go, 'Real original, you're just doing old jokes!' But bands do it all the time.

There's a lot of money being generated by nerds right now. Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, the list goes on and on. Nerds make more money than our government. And with money comes power.

I almost think of nerd brains as rattlesnake venom; like, you can milk it. You can milk the pulpy venom out of the nerd brain and use it for good if you want to.

American television constantly tries to co-op British comedy and create their own version of it. Most of the time it doesn't work; obviously, in the case of 'The Office,' it did. But a lot of times, it doesn't really work.

Just as someone who's been interested in radio and programming for so long, I can usually tell when an interviewer is doing a segment just to fill a programming slot. They ask questions, but they don't care about the answers.

We're gonna have fun, god***it!

There's not many a man who would get shot and then come visit the family responsible.

Some people learn comedy, and some people just are comedy.

You walk into a strip club with a wad of cash; they all flock around you. Strippers are just pigeons with tits. They go where the bread is.

Jokes that make me laugh out loud when I write them almost always bomb. I have no idea why.

The idea of the archetypal nerd is totally blurred these days. So many people of this current generation have grown up with technology and video games. It's just a part of the world now, a part of our shared culture.

Mainstream culture is like your mom: It's always a little late to catch on and gets easily confused by technology, but it means well.

The difference being that a nerd would wear a D&D shirt because he loves D&D while a hipster would wear a D&D shirt because it's ridiculous that he is wearing a D&D shirt.

Long ago you may have given up control of your brain and set it on autopilot either because it just felt like too much work. And it is work! But for me, this work was well worth it for the prospect of not waking up sad every day.

I was very competitive growing up. I can't even play chess anymore because I used to play tournament chess in school. There's too much sense memory of sitting in front of a chess board and getting super intense about it. It's ruined the game for me.

I do podcasts for the same reasons I do stand-up comedy. I love it, and I don't care if anybody else gets it.

It changed my whole outlook. I lost a decade to self-pity, and the next thing I knew I was turning 40.

I played tournament chess from fifth grade up into high school.

Growing up in the 70s and 80s, it took effort to be a nerd. You had to seek out the nerd stuff.

When I was in grade school I was into chess club, Latin club, D&D, computer camp - everything that made vaginas go away.

Sober strip clubs are horrible. When you are sober you see the matrix code behind a strip club. You're paying girls to pretend to like you until you run out of money so they can walk away.

Alcohol is like pouring smiles on your brain.

I've always had a fondness for that satirical, Terry Gilliam - esque evil corporate megastructure, the kind of business that hangs banners that say making your life better as it throws kittens into the gears.

You can't touch the strippers. Why are you paying to not touch someone? That is weird. How do you win in that situation? That is like walking into a deli, starving, and being like, 'Here's $300 - can I stare at the roast beef? Better yet, I'll sit down in this chair and you can mash it around my mouth and balls.

Rats are just Ziploc bags full of disease.

Playing Xbox for 23 hours straight is cool and all, but I'm going to teach you how to spend time on things in your life that will get you the following two things: paid and laid.

I love the South. Although I grew up primarily in Memphis, my family moved around a ton when I was a kid. I guess I never stayed in one place long enough to pick up the accent, but I definitely identify as a Southerner.

It's so much easier to give advice than to take it.

A lot of people complain in the year 2003 that it's not the world of tomorrow as foreseen in the 1950s. 'Where are the flying cars?' people say. 'Where are the robots who bring us blue drinks and warn us of danger?' Alright. We don't have those things, specifically, folks, but you know what we do have? Laser vaginal rejuvenation surgery.

The thing about hipsters is that they take very seriously trying to make themselves look like they don't take themselves seriously.