Janeane Garofalo quotes:

I don't have a good work ethic. I have a real casual relationship with hours.

Let's be very honest about what this is about. It's not about bashing Democrats, it's not about taxes, they have no idea what the Boston tea party was about, they don't know their history at all. This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up.

I guess I just prefer to see the dark side of things. The glass is always half-empty. And cracked. And I just cut my lip on it. And chipped a tooth.

It's been hard in entertainment as a 45-year-old woman to find jobs. They get fewer and far between if you're older, unless you're one of the few lucky ones who work constantly, like Meryl Streep.

I feel like the American people are being lied to and manipulated. President Bush is trying to force 9/11 and Saddam together.

I can't wait for the next fad though, and I predict it's going to be Pennsylvania dutch culture, very Amish. It's going to be bonnets and butter churns.

I love a nice cooking show. It's as aesthetically pleasing as any other thing that tempts the senses, I suppose.

When Communist U.S.S.R. was a superpower, the world was better off. The right-wing media is trying to marginalize the peace movement.

Here's what the right-wing has in, there's no shortage of the natural resources of ignorance, apathy, hate, fear. As long as those things are in the collective conscious and unconscious, the Republicans will have some votes.

Sometimes people say I'm a political comedian, which, actually I'm not. I'm a comedian who sometimes discusses politics, culture - again, the word 'politics' to me is just life.

I think I failed miserably on NewsRadio. I was very nervous because of the caliber of the cast - especially Dave Foley - so I think I did a terrible job.

Pedestrian's rights - because we live in California, I've got to address this issue. I don't know where on the fence I am about that. I suppose if I'm walking, I'm all for it, but if I'm driving, that's a whole other can of worms.

When I see the American flag, I go, 'Oh my God, you're insulting me.'

Let's put it this way: I don't have a good work ethic. I have a real casual relationship with hours. I don't understand why, in entertainment, the hours are as long as they are. It seems like everything takes forever, and no one can tell you why, exactly.

To me, there is no greater act of courage than being the one who kisses first.

Men are allowed to age. Men are allowed to gain weight. Men are allowed to be quirky looking.

German accents and Hassidic accents aren't that romantic. They're more harsh. Although Hebrew, when spoken by certain people, sounds beautiful. There's this beautiful woman I know who speaks Hebrew, and when she speaks, it's so attractive. Maybe it's who's speaking it.

The glass is always half empty. And cracked. And I just cut my lip on it. And chipped a tooth.

I don't think Hollywood was trying to do anything with me. In fact, they lost interest pretty quick. I think I got lucky, briefly, in the '90s, and it just so happened that those movies were the opportunities that came my way. Then it just kind of stopped.

A lot of the hate mail I get is clearly misogynist. I am a proud liberal, feminist woman, and the hate mail I get about those three things is not about me.

To a right-winger, unions are awful. Why do right-wingers hate unions? Because collective bargaining is the power that a worker has against the corporation. Right-wingers hate that.

If you don't do any self-examinations or see a doctor ever, you'll live forever. That's how you do it. The diagnosis is what gets you. You just have a don't ask, don't tell policy with any and all bodily functions.

I can do most anything and not have a problem with it. The only time I have negative attention is when I run naked through the streets brandishing a handgun.

I don't really have funny things to say about politics. I wish I did, but I don't.

You just need an opportunity and then you yourself have to do a good job, and then you hope that people go, 'Oh yeah, I forgot about her.'

I actually was class clown, but I don't know how that happened because I've never been considered an outwardly funny person-as the people in this room will attest.

I have yet to meet very many people in the press who are really, truly interested in writing a good story or getting at the truth. Most press people, when they come into an article, have an angle that they want already, so they need points to support that angle, whatever the angle may be.

Anybody who French bashes just might as well wear a badge that says 'I am a follower! I don't think for myself and I have no idea what I'm talking about.' That would be a French basher.

Not that I was ever an asshole but I used to be much more of a bulldozer.

Last night, I went to a birthday party, and this girl brought a cake and a cheesecake. And the other girls that lived in the apartment, I swear to God, all night long: 'You're taking that cake with you when you go. That cake's not staying in this house.' Like it's this evil, Hope Diamond, nuclear, horrifying cursed thing.

We got married drunk in Vegas . . . We dated for a year, and we got married at a drive-through chapel in a cab. [We thought] you have to go down to the courthouse and sign papers and stuff, so who knew? We were married, and apparently now that [Rob] is getting married for real, his lawyer dug up something.

The inked fingers and the position of them, which is gonna be a 'Daily Show' photo already, of them signaling in this [Nazi salute] manner, as if they have solidarity with the Iraqis who braved physical threats against their lives to vote as if somehow these inked-fingered Republicans have something to do with that.

I guess I just prefer to see the dark side of things.

I was thrilled to work opposite Carl Reiner and Robert De Niro. Mr. Reiner was very chatty and delightful, but I learned that if you want Robert De Niro to like you, don't speak at all, and he'll be friendly to you.

You know what is good about these Dixie Chicks burnings or bashings? It's a wonderful, wonderful way for really stupid people to hook up. They meet, they throw some things on the fire, they talk about Vin Diesel, they tell stories about who their favorite Fox anchor is, they exchange phone numbers and in some cases has led to marriages.

Iraq is a manufactured conflict for the sake of geopolitical dominance in the area.

I got mugged. And they got my knapsack with my comedy notebook in it. So if anybody see two cholos bombing at the Funny Bone chain, that would be them. Just give me a jingle.

Leaving your ears open to the suggestions of others only closes the mind's eye, thereby creating a type of spiritual glaucoma.

Listen, young people, I understand narcissism - clearly. But at least I have the decency to hate myself. And that's what's missing from the young people. They don't have the debilitating self-loathing and the second guessing.

I hate high fashion. I hate that we reward people for being genetic freaks. You hear the guys announcing the runway shows saying, 'A pretty face is your best asset this season.' And what? Ugly girls had a free ride last year?

I'm not religious anymore, but I think it's like papal infallibility, which is a ridiculous man-made tenet, like what I believe most religious tenets to be, are man-made after the fact.

My hell is going to be the stairmaster wing of Dante's inferno, where they're gonna tape my feet to the pedals and the only music I get is Michael Bolton karaoke style.

There's always [on women's magazines] that great photo of the actress or model lifting up her shirt just to show you the bone structure and the six-pack of her own. It's almost like when horses are auctioned and they show you their teeth. 'Am I good enough?'

There is no blacklist. In the first place, in the entertainment business, money talks, bullshit walks. So Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins won't be blacklisted because they are bankable stars. In the second place, if you are a woman, the only things you're going to be blacklisted for in Hollywood are body fat and aging.

Red flag of the eating disorder: the muffin. Keep your eye on the ladies with the muffins...and sometimes I'll just eat the muffin top.

The reason a person is a republican is because something is wrong with them. Again, that's science - that's neuroscience. You cannot be well adjusted, open-minded, pluralistic, enlightened and be a republican.

[Conservative talk radio hosts] have conned the American people into thinking there is such a thing as a pro-life, pro-war, pro-gun, pro-death penalty Christian.

I think we all remember where we were when Rush Hour hit the water. That was an important day.

I'm a walker. I enjoy walking, which I think psychologically expresses my feelings of wanting liberation without exerting myself too much.

I remember the old Times Square from when I was younger, and there was a seedy thrill to it. Some of that is gone, which I have a little bit of nostalgia for.

I absolutely realize that a celebrity spokesperson is not ideal.

I don't enjoy sparring with the audience. It devastates me.

People think that you are a nasty, selfish person if you don`t want to have children.

You know, there's nothing more interesting than seeing a bunch of racists become confused and angry at a speech they're not quite certain what he's saying.

The world would be better off with multiple superpowers. When Communist USSR was a superpower, the world was better off.

You just did a whole read-through. The lie that brought us into war was that Iraq was a threat to us. Well, now it is a threat. Now it is a terrorist hotbed. The fiction is now reality. And now we have to deal with it. It was an attempt at a corporate takeover. This was about oil. It wasn't about human rights. It's not about human rights.

To combat social awkwardness, I would just act like I couldn't be bothered - that kind of aloof persona or aloof demeanor. It's so off-putting.

I guess intractable right-wing ideologues are my mortal enemy.

I say at this point, for different reasons, Bush and Hussein are both very threatening to world peace and to deny that is to be incredibly naive.

I'm not specifically attached to anything other than trying to, in my personal life, fight against where I see right wing thinking. Whether it be around my dinner table or on the street or somebody reading the New York Post.

Tina Fey is part of a generation of women who have changed the face of comedy at 'Second City,' 'SNL,' in sitcoms and in film.

I'm not a cook. I like to watch the Food Network, but I don't like to cook.

I actually was class clown, but I don't know how that happened because I've never been considered an outwardly funny person.

I've seen other comics, with great pleasure, watching their own specials, and I don't know how or why they do it.

My dream would be to be on a show that shoots in New York, because I live here, and then I could walk to work.

I would prefer to be well-liked in any and all situations.

I do not enjoy when people don't like me.

I was just utterly oblivious to how difficult it was, and how difficult it was going to be, and then also in the mid-eighties through the mid-nineties there was a boom of sorts. So there were plenty of stages. If I had started now, there would be very few places to get better and better.

It's mentally exhausting, feeling bad about something you can do nothing about.

Nothing translates worse than comedy into the printed word.

Many people feel that mass acceptance and smooth socialization are desirable life paths for a young adult"¦ Many people are often wrong"¦ Don't bother being nice. Being popular and well liked is not in your best interest. Let me be more clear; if you behave in a manner pleasing to most, then you are probably doing something wrong. The masses have never been arbiters of the sublime, and they often fail to recognize the truly great individual. Taking into account the public's regrettable lack of taste, it is incumbent upon you not to fit in.

Taking into account the public's regrettable lack of taste, it is incumbent upon you not to fit in.

How long do we have to deal with conservative failure? How long? Thirty years is not enough? So I would say enough with that, and I would say check out the Center for American Progress, and the writings by Patrick Garofalo, economic guru. That's what I would say.

Sometimes I am very pleased with lifestyle and sometimes I feel utterly worthless because I have so few interests.

He [God] just seems so man-made to me. There are so many theories, and not everyone can be right. It's human nature to need a religious crutch, and I don't begrudge anyone that. I just don't need one.

I make jewelry occasionally. I'm not a hobbyist. I'm a reader, I'm a lover of books, I like to watch movies, but mostly a lot of nothing. I'm quite content doing very little.

It is not crazy to think that powerful people do some pretty horrible things. And maybe they get out of hand. Maybe it just gets away from them. It snowballs.

When I see guys in bars wearing the real fitted kind of Calvin Klein v-neck t-shirts I just want to go up to them and be like, 'Oh, do you work out? Your tricep looks so great - thank you.'

I wound up getting a lot of other opportunities in the nineties, and then sort of as quickly as it started, it just as quickly ended around 2001. And so yeah, I'd love to continue acting but it's just not up to me.

This dress exacerbates the genetic betrayal that is my legacy.

Listening to your tape, I was reminded of this poem. It has the central question: Is it harder to count on someone or to know that you're being the one counted upon? Anyway, there's this part that goes: if equal affection cannot be, then let the more loving one be me. Have you ever read that one? It's one of my favorites.

When Pat Buchanan came out against the Beijing Women's Conference and there were women standing next to him, smiling and laughing when he was making fun of it, I was so embarrassed. I don't mind when the more liberal or moderate Republican women talk about smaller government or money issues and things of that nature. But when I see a conservative Republican woman in line with the Christian right or coming out against abortion and day-care issues and for taking away womens' aid, I see a self-hating, unenlightened woman, like a self-hating Jew. That blows my mind. I don't get it at all.

... being a feminist means that you believe in civil rights and social justice.

Evil is in the face of every frat guy that ever raised a beer cup and went "whoooooo!"

I didn't start acting until I was 27, and that was just through Gary Shandling and Ben Stiller who I knew through stand-up. And they both in the same year offered me parts on their programs which was unbelievably lucky and fortuitous.

The media is supposed to be custodians of the facts and watchdogs of government. They have, for the most part, neglected to be either of those things.

I'm not a big fan of the comics competing against each other.

He said that faith is like a glass of water. When you're young, the glass is small, and it's easy to fill up. But the older you get, the bigger the glass gets, and the same amount of liquid doesn't fill it anymore. Periodically, the glass has to be refilled.

There is no way any rational, reasonable person can say that the Bush Administration has been good for America.

I guess when your heart gets broken, you sort of start to see the cracks in everything.

I was too ignorant to realize, "Oh, this will be difficult."

Boy, does that give you street cred for years after, if you tell people you were on 'The Larry Sanders Show!'

I don't know that I would need to be famous as a Middle East policy expert to see that unilateral imperialism is bad policy.

I would tell the Democrats in Washington who are trying to be civil with the "bipartisanship" to please stop and let the joker die once and for all, let the agents of chaos hit the pavement, stop picking them up.

I did not support Operation Desert Fox.

For some reason I get advertised when I travel as a political comedian, which I'm not. Sometimes I talk about it and sometimes I don't.

Sometimes the critics review me harshly for not being critical of government but it's not me who has said I was political.

As you can tell from watching the show, I'm not a strong joke writer per se.

There's been times when I have actually had sex indoors. And then you kind of sober up a little when it's over. I become like a bartender at 2 AM. OK, people, let's move it out! Yeah, you don't have to go home but you can't stay here.

This world is bullshit. And just because I appear in music video wherein I am in my underwear, and make young women feel not good enough so that they become anorxeic; and okay, maybe because of that I became popular more quickly than other singers who are, I don't know, maybe more talented or better songwriters. That doesn't matter because, and... um... my boyfriend is a magician, and he can pull a quarter out of your ear and say things like 'We have not met before have we?' Go with yourself.

What has Iraq done to us?

I don't think that the administration is being particularly honest with the American people about what this is going to cost in life and in dollars, what the dangers are, retaliatory strikes, once it happens. This is not a war that needs to happen immediately, if ever.

For my stand-up, I always have my notebook with me and if something strikes me, I'll write it down.

Sometimes there's a lot of tangents because I forget what I'm going to say so much. Sometimes there's very little tangents and stuff for some reason, and then some nights it's all tangents and I can't find my way, and then sometimes I wind up just talking about something completely extemporaneously and then never mention it again ever. It's just completely different.

You can't have cinema by committee if you're trying to do it well.

I'm grateful for any opportunity to act.

The term 'celebrity' makes my skin crawl.

TV, it's a director's medium, and they wanna make it look interesting. To be rehearsing mostly for the sake of where you're standing so they can do the lighting, that's what I don't like.

Every year my family would pile into the car for our vacation and drive 80 trillion miles just to prove we couldn't get along in any setting.

Should have dogs before they have kids. Everybody.

I despise in others my own characteristics.

I truly believe a woman's weight is a political issue, and if one young woman out there can see me and not feel crummy about herself, that's a good thing.

Silence does not equal patriotism. Obedience is not the American way.

So, apparently, if you are a pre-sentient mass of cells, this country will protect you and your rights to the n-th degree. If you have made the mistake of becoming an Iraqi citizen, apparently we can just drop bombs on you with impunity.

The right, like Pat Buchanan and Rush Limbauggh, use women and the black man and the Hispanic immigrant and the gay man as a scapgoat for society's ills. They pretend it's about traditional family values, but that's a bullshit phrase that means nothing to me. They like to use us all. They use pro-life as a way to hate women and slam women, dressed up in the nobility of saving unborn fetuses. I think it's just misogyny.

I feel bad that people think that "feminism" is a dirty word. I don't understand that at all, I'm proud to be labeled a feminist. I consider myself a person who has throughout my entire life stood up for myself. It's never been my ambition to be someone who takes a backseat to anything. I'm not a male basher at all. I divide people into assholes and non-assholes, and that's genderless. I encounter sexism everyday.

You can tell a lot about a person by how excited they are to do the Macarena.

We're our own worst enemies a lot of the time, but I still blame men.

Sage advice? If you're drunk, stay away from the phone. You can't get the answering machine message back.

Irrational crushes, infatuations, or obsessions. Whatever you want to label it, it's important to reach out to others.