Top 50 Chris Gethard Quotes

I’m very happy with my decision to go sober. It’s helped my life. It’s helped my mental stability.

I think I’m a very notoriously positive comic.

I classify myself as a comedian, but I’m one of those comedians who also acts so that I can split the difference and feel insecure about both.

The whole romanticized ‘sad clown’ thing, we gotta get rid of that. That has to go! That’s just getting sick people to voluntarily stay sicker and sadder than they have to be.

I’ve seen situations where I think comics are really unrealistic about what creative expression and what the artistic freedom, what that entails.

I’ve said some things on stage where the crowd was like, ‘Whoa, that’s bad’ – and I never say it again because that’s the feedback I get.

By August of 2003, I had graduated from Rutgers, gone through a stretch of living at my parents’ house, and wound up sharing an apartment with a college friend of mine in Montclair, New Jersey.

I had bedbugs in 2005. I felt like a leper. Worse than a leper. At least lepers had a colony they could go and live in with other people who empathized. I instead had friends stand up from tables and walk out of restaurants when I told them I had bedbugs, because they were afraid I’d transfer the bugs to them.

Getting help for my issues was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, because when I get dangerously sad or manic, those feelings seek to perpetuate themselves.

In 2010, I was the star of a sitcom. It came and went pretty fast. But in the months from when I was cast in the sitcom through when it was done airing, my life did change remarkably.

I take medications every morning and night – they’re my breakfast, and they’re my dessert. I love them.

As far as comedy goes, I’m endlessly inspired by Jo Firestone.

‘What if?’ is just about the worst question I can ask myself, and I want to avoid it at all costs for the rest of my life.

I just really remember the feeling of being a younger comedian who was kind of an outlier for being experimental and weird and how that could feel lonely or hopeless.

I’ve exceeded the expectations people had for me as an unconfident runt who grew up in North Jersey as well as the expectations I had for myself.

Maria Bamford is someone who’s really inspired me in a big way.

I quit drinking in 2002, mere months before my college graduation.

Sometimes I get gigs in weird, artsy places because weird, artsy people embraced my public-access show, which I could only have done in the way I did in New York.

I think comics do need permission to fail. I think comics do need permission to go up and try stuff.

What all my favorite comedians have in common is extraordinary honesty.

You don’t often see vulnerability on TV, especially talk shows.

Anyone who’s ever been around an emergency in Manhattan realizes that there are plainclothes officers on these streets walking past us more than we ever realize.

The one-word story about why I have a chip on my shoulder is ‘bullying.’

I didn’t like who I was. I spent a lot of my life regretting who I was, which is a sad thing to say.

Everyone likes to laugh. Everyone likes to dance along to some music.

No one in New York hangs out in their apartments.

I feel like a lot of performers’ worst shows happened in Philly. There’s something about that town.

I think so often about how, when I was starting out at UCB, Conan O’Brien was in town, and on his show back then, they sometimes did character bits, and I started getting paid to dress up as a page or a Dutch boy on his show.

I know there are many things California can offer – personally, professionally, meteorologically – that New York can’t. It sounds awesome.

I think there’s too many gay jokes in comedy and not enough honest explorations of sexuality.

I think there’s enough TV that makes people feel dumb out there.

I always just try to remind myself, like, at the end of the day, no matter how much pressure it is to be a TV show host, you still get to be a TV show host.

I’m a pescatarian.

I’m hungry in the ways that every artist is, but I also have this extra layer. I’ve done a lot of things that were consciously not for money, but because I’m so convinced I’m going to die in my mid-30s, I’m like, ‘That’s not what’s important. Doing cool stuff and having that legacy is what’s important.’

The street I lived on for the first handful of years of my life was lined with modest, lower-middle-class houses with small front yards and cracked driveways – your typical North Jersey neighborhood, with all the odd hidden darkness that that implies.

As a stand-up, as a storyteller, as an improviser, I’ve done thousands of shows. They allow me to work out new material that might turn into something later. They let me keep my muscles sharp for when the rent-paying gigs do come along. They keep me sane.

One of the reasons I stay in New York is because you’re always around so many other types of arts, and it’s easy to just get lost in it.

The stereotype of New Yorkers is that we’re people who avoid warm human interaction, we’re always in too much of a rush to enjoy simple things, and that we’re just generally rude.

There are certain fundamental things that scream, ‘I just moved to New York.’ Things like eating cheesecake at Junior’s or heading out to Coney Island to ride the Cyclone.

New Yorkers will be rude, but at least they do so out of the rationale that everyone around them is always slowing them down. Los Angeles, I learned, is a city full of people who have the personality of the coolest pretty boy from your eighth-grade class.

I get to do comedy for a living.

Anyone who lives in N.Y.C. will tell you that getting into a confrontation on a city street is a complete nightmare 100 percent of the time.

When I really have it together, I think I successfully pull off looking like the exact middle point between Macklemore and Ron Howard, only with a much bigger forehead than either of them.

If I pretended to be confident all the time, that would just be a lie.

I think the key to improv is always listening. It’s embracing. It’s positivity. It’s hearing things and not shutting them down.

When I was growing up, I think I was expected to be seen and not heard. You’re this little, nerdy kid; no one wants to hear about how sad you are. Nobody wants to hear that you feel lonely.

Cops in New York City don’t have the best reputation. It’s a fast-paced city, and they deal with a lot, and many people have seen lots of cops interact with the public utilizing what can be gently called ‘not the best customer service.’

I moved to Queens from New Jersey in 2004 and have continued to stick with New York to such a degree that when people ask me to explain it, I’m sometimes unable to provide an answer.

Cops are everywhere in New York City. Cars drive by every few minutes. Uniforms stand nonchalantly at street corners.

I am a stereotypical northeasterner. I’m always in a rush. I’ve attracted stares from out-of-towners when I’ve shoved past someone blocking the subway door.