Words matter. These are the best Whitney Cummings Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
In my business, you have so many things going at once – TV shows, projects, movies – and sometimes, things never actually come to fruition.
Sometimes the funnier you are, the more vulnerable and scared you are underneath it all. So I think, for me, comedy was always a defense. It was a weapon so that you can’t hurt me.
I’m kind of emotionally dyslexic, and when I feel vulnerable or nervous, I laugh.
Being known doesn’t get you anywhere; it just makes the bar and the expectations higher, especially if the venue wants to charge a certain ticket price because you’re known. So people are like, ‘I paid $60 to see you, and you’re on TV’.
There was a time in L.A. when I drove to 7-Eleven to go grocery shopping, and I locked my keys in my car, which wasn’t insured. My wallet was in there, and I couldn’t call AAA, because I only had $7 in my bank account. It was one of those moments where I was like, ‘O.K., I literally have nothing right now.’
I don’t think that women necessarily always write like women. I was a writer on the ‘Comedy Central Roasts’ for a while, and I always wrote the jokes that people assumed the men would write.
For writing stand-up, I have to have a little bit of anger and frustration to be motivated to do it. Stand-up, for me, comes from kind of a hostile engine.
When a lot of people are distrusting the news they watch, comedians are stepping up talking about things that most people are too afraid to talk about, shining light on problems nobody else will admit, whether it’s Samantha Bee or John Oliver or Trevor Noah.
I’d love to be Katherine Heigl’s best friend in a movie!
The indie movie world is like a bad Tinder date, and there are always strings attached.
I was joking the other day about how my real life feels like a TV show, and my TV life feels real – because, to be on Thursday nights on NBC, which is what I grew up with, has been such a big part of inspiring me. To be part of that tradition is really completely surreal, and I’m so grateful.
We’re socially constructed to hide our flaws, and that breeds pain for a lot of people.
I remember my agent at ICM at the beginning of my career telling me that I wasn’t pretty enough, that I was always going to be a quirky sidekick. And he was an ogre of a man. He should have been carrying a torch. If he was in a bar, he couldn’t have come near me, and then he was deciding my fate.
I had a moment where I was onstage once… As a comedian, you just think, ‘Be funny as possible all the time – like, funny at all costs – jokes, jokes, jokes.’ That’s how my mentality was.
I feel like, in a lot of shows where the woman is in charge, the woman is this ball buster and the guy is sort of weak and spineless. And that’s never been my experience in a relationship. I think it’s much more interesting that the guy is the boss. And there are stakes.
Being on the plane is my catch-up time. I write thank-you notes. I read. I write stand-up jokes.
Saying women aren’t funny is now like saying Asians can’t drive or saying black people have bad credit. It’s just really, like, so obsolete.
After school, I’d wait for someone to pick me up and no one would, so I’d be like, ‘I guess I’ll walk home.’ I had to be a hustler, because nobody did anything for me.
My body is not supportive of my career. My body has other plans for me. My body’s plan is to slowly rot from the inside. By the time I’m ready to have kids, it’s not going to be viable to do that.
I did some pretty embarrassing modeling, like catalogs and QVC. I know there’s probably a stereotype where all pretty girls think they’re unattractive, but modeling is the worst thing for your self-esteem, because you’re never pretty enough, you’re never thin enough.
The most dangerous place I’ve ever performed standup is in my home state of California.
Comedians are obsessed with justice and the truth.
I have a theory, which is that the idea of a roast is to go to this forbidden, uncomfortable, almost performance-art-level shock place, but because we’re so regularly shocked and offended today, the idea of an hour and a half of unbridled negativity is just so unappealing.
I’m the one who’s dating the craft-service guy instead of the producer. Plus, if a producer is going to date a hot young thing, I’m probably not the first person on their list – the weird, quirky, funny girl.
In the entertainment industry, there is this fear of getting older, because we have high definition television now, and you can see things that the human eye can’t even pick up. But the good thing about standup is that the older you get, the funnier you get.
I don’t want to look at myself – ever. All I see is that my face is a problem. It’s asymmetrical. I get terrible bags under my eyes.
I wasn’t one of those kids who stole Richard Pryor records. I wasn’t a comedy-nerd kid. I had no concept of stand-up. Actually, the only inkling of stand-up I had was I read one of Paul Reiser’s books when I was, like, 12. I found it at a yard sale, and I carried it around with me for six years.
I guess the verdict is in – I am not a sociopath. It’s not effective or productive not to be nice. It would undermine the goals I want to achieve on any given day.
I used to put on spray tan, like, three times a day, and it just looked like there was a terrible accident in my bed at all times… it looked like a crime scene.
One of the big conversations I’m trying to have onstage right now is that to be pro-woman, you don’t have to be anti-man. Saying all men suck makes you look like an idiot. And it’s not helpful.