Neal Brennan

Everyone has some secret and some source of pain or sadness and I just said mine first and then everybody went after me. I get it every day in my Instagram direct messages, people thanking me for talking about depression and telling me how it helped them.

I love doing stand up. I think it's a really worthwhile art form. It's so unique in all the things it combines, in terms of it being philosophizing, preaching, speaking truth to power and basic communicating. It's a good way to talk back to the world.

I just love well-organized, very serious nonsense.

I love 'Frontline.' It's the best TV show in the history of television.

I love the fact that I can make a podcast in my house and tens of thousands of people will hear it. I also like that it's gotten rid of a lot of gatekeepers.

What I love is getting a new joke, or a premise like a sketch idea or a movie idea. That's the best feeling for a comedian.

I think anyone can write about anything that they have knowledge of and exposure to.

I think the biggest influence on my stand-up would be Chris Rock, in that I love that Chris is basically an essayist, in that he’ll take a subject and just try and attack it from as many different angles as he can."

Comedy’s the only job I say where you wake up and you’re like 'Can’t do it!'

I always say to Blake Griffin that he has a better comedy career than I do.

There's nothing worse than trying to be funny and not being funny.

I just realized at a certain point that no matter how much writing I did, I'm still a gym rat for comedy clubs.