Top 66 Ali Wong Quotes

Stand-up comedy is something that you have to strive to do, multiple times a night, every night, to be good.

In order to be the best comic, you have to perform in a wide diversity of rooms.

If you want me to perform in Silver Lake – where it looks like ‘Vice’ magazine threw up everywhere, where all the men are wearing V-necks to their belly buttons, salmon pants, and carrying a screenplay – I’ll do it, because they might appreciate a Banksy joke I can’t do anywhere else.

I think one of the hardest things to talk about as a comic is having money because it’s so unrelatable.

At the end of the day, I’m not really trying to make a statement with any of my standup.

I’m discovering, and I think other mums are discovering too, that when you become a mum, you don’t have to change into this frumpy, wholesome role model who is perfect and loses all of your identity. You can still have the same personality you’ve always had.

My husband’s chill.

When you’re a mom, you need sparkle to compensate for the light inside of you that has died.

The life of a true, traditional stand-up is really unappealing for women.

I’ve seen many female comics that a lot of people haven’t heard of who are so funny, and I saw them come up, and they were working so hard, and then all of a sudden they had a baby, and they just got tied up in motherhood, and eventually, they kind of just stopped doing stand-up, and I thought it was such a shame.

Asian men are the sexiest. They got no body hair from the neck down.

I’ll tell you how I balance family and career. I have a nanny.

That’s the difference between a great comic and a bad comic – one has great instincts and has a lot of compassion and can feel what’s right and what’s wrong.

I think feminism is the worst thing that ever happened to women. Our job used to be no job. We had it so good!

Some people do specials, like, when they’ve only been doing comedy for three years or something. Which is fine! But I’m kind of old fashioned, and I knew that I didn’t want to do one too early.

For the first year I lived in New York, I never ate out. I literally just ate lentils and brown rice at home. Sometimes I’d treat myself to this half chicken from Chinatown that cost $3.50.

I really loved being pregnant, especially because people treat you so nice.

Whenever I feel mom-guilt, or I feel pressure to be a better mom – to cook salmon on a bed of quinoa for my kids – I just think to myself, ‘I… have… suffered… enough.’ And then I feel fine about feeding my toddler a bag of chips for dinner.

Stand-up will always be my favorite and the most important thing that I do. I view everything else as free money.

Before my dad passed away, I would miss a lot of baby showers and weddings, sacrificed a lot of family and friend events for dumb road dates. I don’t do that anymore. It’s gone in the other direction. I’m more inclined to put family and friends first.

The biggest downside of L.A. is the traffic and parking tickets. They turn me into Michael Douglas in ‘Falling Down.’

Nothing is off-limits. There’s just some things I cannot crack. Politics I can’t do. When I start to talk about it, I just get really angry and super sincere. I have never found a way to craft all of that absurdity into funny.

I would love to dress like Beyonce: some custom-print, neoprene onesie with no pants.

I was so boisterous in high-school, I don’t think a lot of boys liked me that much ’cause they were like, ‘Oh, she’s so loud and so crazy.’ But then this thing happens in your late twenties, and guys begin to take note of women’s personalities more or something.

Food is a huge source of comfort for me.

There are certainly other female comics who are moms, but I don’t know any who are actively touring with their kids. But there are more and more becoming moms, and it’s awesome. I feel we’re in a super sisterhood.

The word ‘supportive’ has no place in stand-up comedy. I hate when people are like, ‘Support female comedy.’ That’s not a real genre of comedy. I think if you have true respect for women as three-dimensional creators who are innovative, you wouldn’t group them together like that.

Having a two-year-old is very hard. I feel like I’m in a relationship with an emotionally unstable woman who is also physically abusive and never gets in trouble for it.

Aside from Joan Rivers and Roseanne, it’s hard for me to think of any female comedian who’s had kids and has a serious level of fame – like, the level where your mother has heard of them.

I’m always asked how my husband is feeling about my success with a note of concern. He feels great. It’s not hard to feel good about your spouse making money.

I don’t want to be that famous.

Some useful advice for all of my Asian-American brothers and sisters – never go paint-balling with a Vietnam veteran.

People are always very surprised by how, offstage with my husband, I’m a completely different person… very soft and nurturing.

Breast-feeding was so stressful for me. I kept on clenching and pushing my tongue against the bottom teeth, so they started to move toward an underbite.

I have this fantasy of relaxing and doing nothing. But I’m obviously very passionate about stand-up comedy. I mean, I keep doing it. So I must be really into it.

A lot of comics will say that the thing about specials now is that they’re not special anymore because there are so many of them, and they come and go, and they’re not really talked about. They just kind of come and go.

The audience is so important. Because there’s something that I might think is super funny, but if it’s just not getting the feedback, I have to let it go.

Breastfeeding is this savage ritual that just reminds you that your body is a cafeteria now.

When you’re pregnant, you’re all gassy, and you’re hungry, but then you’re nauseous.

When you have a child, you think about your own mortality.

I tried being a stay-at-home mom for eight weeks. I like the stay-at-home part. Not too crazy about the mom aspect.

I constantly peed in my pants up until the 8th grade and wore an extra-large sailor uniform from kindergarten to 8th grade because my mom was scared I’d grow out of it. So I learned to make fun of myself at school and summer camp.

I want to write my daughter something about how much I love her and what I would want to say to her before I die.

I’m addicted to picking my nose. In a world of red tape and bureaucracy, where it takes forever to buy a house or get a cell-phone plan going, it’s so instant to just stick your finger up there and go for something your own body produces.

My dad was a doctor, and he would tell us a lot of nasty, funny stories from the hospital. It was funny to me when I’d go over to other people’s houses and they didn’t talk about intestines at the table.

Making people laugh was the only thing I ever truly excelled at. But at home, I was so quiet with my family, which taught me to be really observant.

My goal is really to just make people laugh with integrity, like, with something that I still find funny.

I didn’t expect to be so comfortable handing my child off to a nanny without getting any of her information. As soon as she arrived at my house, I threw my baby in her arms and went to Target.

Women, a lot of the time, are so much funnier than men, but they just choose not to do comedy for a living.

People obsess about casting and representation, but really, all the real work is behind the camera. Casting an Asian American into a bad role where they’re shoehorned into these stereotypes is worse than not having cast them at all.

I think that’s one of the reasons women don’t tell people when they’ve had a miscarriage – they think it’s their fault.

My dad was obviously a really quirky, unconventional Asian man who didn’t care about what other people thought. When he would fight with my mom, he would be really dramatic. He would be like, ‘Devil, get away, for I am God’s property.’ He would say crazy things that were so melodramatic but so theatrical and funny.

A lot of people like to ask me, ‘Ali, how on earth do you balance family and career?’ Men never get asked that question. Because they don’t.

In Hue, Vietnam, we had savory rice pancakes with crumbled shrimp and pork rinds. I’ve still never had a version as good.

With my husband, I do really appreciate the fact that we – even though we’re different kinds of Asian, there is a cultural shorthand between us, and I don’t have to explain anything. I’ve dated guys before who weren’t Asian-American, and it frustrated me when I would have to defend why beans belong in a dessert.

Comedy has so much to do with honesty, and women can be more open about their emotions.

I have a hoarding problem because my mom is from a third-world country. And she taught me that you can never throw away anything because you never know when a dictator is going to overtake the country and snatch all of your wealth.

Writing is the life blood of everything in Hollywood. Without writers, there are no scripts, no acting work.

It’s really strange being in, like, Addison,Texas, and having people come up to me at a Nordstrom’s or a gas station. It’s really, really surreal.

My dad grew up with straight-up no running water. He slept in a twin bed with his two sisters and his mom, like ‘Charlie And The Chocolate Factory’ style: like, feet at the head, feet at the head alternating. And then I think his dad slept on, like, a bed of newspapers on a floor in their apartment.