David Cross Quotations

Occasionally I'll watch Fox News for as long as I can tolerate it, or CNN. I'll watch until I get infuriated, but you got to know what they're talking about and what they're not talking about.

Sketches have characters, exits, entrances and are vastly different.

I'm pretty happy. I obviously have complaints about things, but for the most part, I'm on the above-average side of happy people.

The best thing about me is there are no skeletons.

If there are a couple of adjectives people use to describe me, anger is usually in there. I've never taken that as criticism. It's the way I naturally communicate. But I'm not faux-angry, like Lewis Black, or angry like a gun-toting crazy person. I'm just angry in a mild way - it's not like I'm going to do anything about it.

Religion triggers a lot of emotions in me, most of which stem from being raised Jewish in a very Baptist community in the South. I didn't believe any of it from an early age - the clubby quality of whatever religion or church you belonged to, Judaism included. It just struck me as foolish.

I went to a bunch of marches in New York and Washington, and you know I believe in the cause, but to march with those people takes a lot of compromise on my end.

There were a number of referendums in '98 that most of the things I voted for passed. That's very satisfying when you feel that most of the country is in step with your views.

I remember being a kid and the Vietnam War was huge and looking at Watergate.

I think I'd be a really good dad. So perhaps I'm doing society a disservice by not having as many kids as possible.

I think people, for the most part, actually want what they think is best.

I was heavily influenced by Andy Kaufman and Steven Wright.

My biggest problem is retaining the exact information.

In New York there isn't that weird palpable competitive thing where it's friendly but everyone isn't trying to top one another with jokes when you're just hanging around.

I'm of the mindset that most people who have kids are, which is, 'Hey, I want another me. I like me. I'm pretty cool, and I've got really great ideas, and the way I think is the right way to think. Let's put another one of me out there.' So I'll have kids one day.

Besides if people really want to support the troops they would vote democrat.

I hate bumper stickers, you can't sum anything up. All you do is paint yourself in some caricaturist corner.

I love Tinkle, it's really the most fun I've had in years.

Nobody is going to be as bad for free thinking, right-minded individuals than George Bush.

I also try to think of ways to articulate the joke more economically.

I don't think HBO would want to do anything in conjunction with Sub Pop but I never asked either.

I have no hesitation doing children's movies. Zero. And I don't even have kids.

I lived in LA for almost nine years and if I never went back there again it would be fine.

I love doing stuff with Todd Barry and Jon Benjamin. We give the stage to good bands and funny people.

It's not about trying to be funny all the time. It's more of a document that hopefully is funny.

I go for looks, how they operate, but mainly who is going to stand behind them,

We are just pleased to help out, ... We want to help people that may be evacuating the Gulf Coast area to have some normalcy and take their minds off Hurricane Katrina for a couple of hours.

There are a lot of reasons for that. For one, we have good light here.

Where my comedy really solidified was when Bush was elected. I couldn't understand how craven and crass he was, and how dumb other people were for electing him.

Back when the Bible was written, then edited, then rewritten, then rewritten, then re-edited, then translated from dead languages, then re-translated, then edited, then rewritten, then given to kings for them to take their favorite parts, then rewritten, then re-rewritten, then translated again, then given to the pope for him to approve, then rewritten, then edited again, the re-re-re-re-rewritten again...all based on stories that were told orally 30 to 90 years AFTER they happened.. to people who didnt know how to write... so...

I like pot, I enjoy pot, I like to smoke it. But, the one thing I don't like about pot is the subculture it's spawned. I think it's embarrassing and really juvenile and uncreative

You cannot win a War on Terrorism. It's like having a war on jealousy.

I know this is obviously biased as well, but in my Twitter feed, on my Facebook, 90 percent are gushing, glowing, "Thank you for doing that"-type of reviews. "It's ballsy, it's honest, it's hilarious" - that kind of stuff. Obviously those are fans.

In New York, you are constantly faced with this very urgent decision that you have to make, about every twenty minutes...you have to decide, immediately, you have to go "Ohmigod. Do I look at the most beautiful woman in the world or the craziest guy in the world?"

I do believe that on a whole, women are definitely smarter than men...I also believe that dogs are smarter than women. No? That one, you don't believe it? You believe that I didn't do a series of tests? You are right to not believe it, because I'm going to go ahead and admit that I do not believe what I just said, it was what's described as a 'joke.' Um, I'll be telling a bunch of them here tonight.

I know Dave [Attel] and we're friendly, and I have nothing but respect for him.

It's a lot of anti-gay, racist humor—which people like in America—all couched in 'I'm telling it like it is.' He's in the right place at the right time for that gee-shucks, proud-to-be-a-redneck, I'm-just-a-straight-shooter-multimillionaire-in-cutoff-flannel-selling-ring-tones act. That's where we are as a nation now. We're in a state of vague American values and anti-intellectual pride.

All my friends are always telling me how hard it is to have kids. 'Oh, David, it's so hard.' That's not hard. I'll tell you what hard is. Try talking your girlfriend into her third consecutive abortion. Yeah, that's hard, that takes finesse. You're just inconvenienced.

Because you've been on dates where y'know, you forget to open your eyes and wear pants and speak English.

I did one of the worst shows for that kind of thing in Northampton, Massachusetts, which is one of the most liberal spots on the planet. There were numerous people who walked out, somebody had thrown a beer, I had people yelling and screaming.

The Bible is the funniest book I have ever read. It's so funny! Right in the first six pages, it's funny!

The South has more of a disproportionate amount of irony on T-shirts than any other region in the country.

You have to have some level of attachment, you can still have passion and believe but it has to be softened somewhat.

Go back and read Sinclair Lewis - It Can't Happen Here or Babbitt. For a guy or girl who's going to do an hour of political comedy, it might be a little rough, sure. But I think if you're spending 10 minutes or less, and you're talking about - not necessarily [Donald Trump] but his supporters and the media coverage, there's all kinds of angles to explore. It doesn't just have to be simply, "This guy is crazy!" It's more about the idea of that kind of guy rising to the prominence he has, to actually become the Republican candidate.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force is one of the funniest shows on TV and I was a little intimidated working with those guys 'cause you're in a sound booth by yourself and they're all in a room in Atlanta.

There is nothing interesting about just seeing me doing the show then seeing the fans and how much people love me.

There is also a kind of mean-spiritedness with LA comics.

I think it was there before, but - because of social media, too - there are these people who fancy themselves as tolerant, and don't see the hypocrisy and double standard of how they're not tolerant at all, and they're just strident and they don't listen. There's no dialogue anymore.That's maybe, truly, the worst part of [Donald] Trump's legacy is just people yelling at each other.

I am against the war, but I do support our white troops. No, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. I'm not a Republican. I'm not a member of the party of inclusion. Wonderful, tolerant, rational human beings they are...

What happened to our friendship? I really think it's our obligation as friends to be brutally honest and be frank with them and say, 'Look, I'm sorry, but your baby is fking boring.'

What President of the Airline is doing is, he's urging everyone to give up their frequent flyer miles for sick kids... But as I was reading this, there were two empty seats next to me. Why can't sick kids sit there? If they're so concerned with sick kids, shouldn't they have like a pen of sick kids next to the gate?

I have always tried to use humor to "help ever" and "hurt never," for I find that to laugh is like swallowing a secret that Santa Claus farted.

I really don't have a problem with gay marriage... because I'm tolerant and rational.

I work a lot and I like to get out and work but the work I do to make the other work work I'm not very good at.

If you want to reinstate the 14.4 billion dollars that Bush cut out of the veterans program then vote democrat.

I don't think of my opponents in the sense that I don't think of them consciously, I don't steer it one way or the other.

I'd say 95 percent of my audience was white. They were mostly kind of older hipster folks like myself.

It's just an easy catchall to describe a style because there are a lot of alternative comics who are completely different from each other.

James Lipton: The most pompous arrogant failure in history.

'With a telescope, some munchies, and a warm blanket, watch for Halley's comet.' Yeah. I like that. There's no time limit. Just sit there and grow old together.

Florida was the low point.The entire state, yep. I'm not sure I'd go back.

I have a few business ideas (that I'm going to advertise in High Times, amongst other places), and one of them is a service in which I offer to eat and describe pork to kosher people.

High Times magazine is a notch intellectually below Highlights for Children. I mean, they're both great to read when you're baked, but come on, ya know...

We get to see it! January 1st, 2000! We get to see... all those fundamentalist preachers having to do their backpedaling when the Armageddon doesn't occur.

I think for a lot of people, it's just where their saturation point was. Once you get into the [Donald] Trump stuff and the Republican stuff and the Ayn Rand followers, it doesn't let up for about half an hour. It gets hard and stays hard for a while.

So all my friends have kids now... which I think is rude.

Because I think whenever you sit down with another human being who would absolutely disagree with you on every issue, you learn about them as a person and you relate, in human terms, and it's much more difficult for either side to dismiss out of hand, like that person's a freak, that person's a Nazi.

When we were on the bus doing the Mr. Show Hooray for America Tour there was a lot of laughter and a lot of pot smoking and a lot of speed metal listening and video game playing. Of course that was all Brian Posehn.

The underpinning of immigration concerns is xenophobia and racism and nationalism.

I do lots of other drugs but I smoke pot maybe 5-10 times a year now. I used to smoke it all the time, but I don't, and I haven't for awhile. That's just because it makes me - and I'm not saying this about everybody else - but it makes me kind of dumb and self-conscious.

I recently attended a pro-drug rally... in my basement.

I just often find myself getting shrill, angry and the jokes get more incredulous.

I don't want to do 20 minutes on Donald Trump. I want to do 10 minutes and move on. I wouldn't even do that with a live show, because I don't want it to feel like "An Evening Of Political Comedy."

Hopefully people are upset for the reason I want them to be upset. Even when I was doing open mics, I've always had people upset. I've never been the consummate crowd-pleaser.

I've never thought of myself as a hoity-toity cultural critic.

Most people who have kids are, "Hey, I want another me. I like me. I'm pretty cool, and I've got really great ideas, and the way I think is the right way to think. Let's put another one of me out there."

It's not that I don't have kids for some personal reason outside of, I just haven't had kids. And I haven't met someone who wanted to, as far as I know. And perhaps I'm attracted to women who aren't ready to make that commitment just yet.

I think pornography is the only art form where you can be videotaped on a shaky handy cam sucking off a horse and be considered a star.

I read the New York Times, and if I'm in a different city, I'll skim that paper.

Then I will tape the sets and even though I`m not very successful sometimes I will try to cut out the fat and put the jokes closer together.

I don't mean this to sound hyperbolic but there are increasingly, albeit really minor, similarities between now and how Germany was lulled into what happened pre-WW2.

Once you get into the [Donald] Trump stuff, you get people going, "I didn't come here to have my political views bashed."

If you wanna find out 101 things to do with plums, heh, read your in-flight magazine.

We should just get somebody from the left and the right and they should all throw bumper stickers at each other and the first one to cover the other one wins.

I'm concerned about how and why there is no gun control.

I'll think of the idea and then I'll write something down, then within that there will be a joke or two which is the original thing which I thought was funny.

I'm concerned about organized religion getting away with what it gets away with.

You can't just yell jokes at people.

And it's one more shitty thing to write about somebody, in between getting really, really, really upset at female Ghostbusters and Gamergate, and the things that really matter.

I was born Jewish, but I am an atheist. I dont believe in God.

I'd be curious to find out, but I don't think people in the entertainment industry are proportionally more or less serious politically than anyone in the landscaping industry.

I was in Antwerp - which, I had about 20 shows left at that point - and a guy said, "That's Dave Attell's." Also, Antwerp was my smallest audience, so the guy was right there. I was like, "What?" He said, "Dave Attell does a bit about, 'Why are there luggage stores in the airport?'" I had never seen that, and I would never ever, ever, ever - please believe me - I would never lift material from somebody ever, and certainly not knowingly.

It's easy to see that two people might come up with that same idea.

If people disagree with me and want to articulate it, that's not only their right but almost their obligation.

I'd like to think that I'm not just making the point that I'm an atheist over and over, but that I explore different facets of religion. There's no way of bringing up religion without sounding like an asshole.

It probably does make it more difficult to enjoy a good laugh at someone who's onstage, seemingly yelling at you. But I'm not yelling at the audience, I'm yelling at the world. It genuinely sucks if people are taking it that way. But I'm not talking to individuals.

I'm not a centrist, and there's nothing about me that's centrist. I never have been.

I think I could have a funnier, more economic sets. But that's the comedy I do. And I understand if people aren't interested in it and would rather listen to someone else. But I'll never understand the anger people have toward me.

I've never written jokes. I mean, I'll write things on a piece of paper and riff on them onstage.

As far as just my stand-up is concerned, I don't care about changing anyone's mind. I'm not making an argument. I'm a guy doing comedy.