Steven Wright

Babies don't need a vacation, but I still see them at the beach... it pisses me off! I'll go over to a little baby and say 'What are you doing here? You haven't worked a day in your life!'

Comedians are sociologists. We're pointing out stuff that the general public doesn't even stop to think about, looking at life in slow-motion and questioning everything we see.

I think it's wrong that only one company makes the game Monopoly.

I liked school, but I used to dread those moments when the teacher would call me up to give an oral report. I forced myself to deal with it and not dwell on the class in front of me - to keep a straight face, give the report and concentrate on getting it right. That's normally how I perform. That's how I am.

When I'm on stage, it's really intense. My mind is going a million miles an hour, trying to remember my act, trying to say it all the right way. It's funny how different it looks and how it's happening. There are three Fellini circuses in my head, and outwardly it looks like I'm going to get a bagel.

You know those things that you throw the twigs into and it spits them out? That's what I do. The branches are like life, and I throw them into my head and some of it comes out as humor.

To me, comedy is just twisting reality. It's commenting or observing or twisting life.

When I was a kid, I never did funny things to get attention. I was never a funny person. I was never, like, 'Oh, wow. I could say this some day on stage.'

I paint; I draw and paint - I've been doing that since I was in third grade, drawing realistically and then changing to abstract art. That was my first creative thing before guitar or comedy.

I never even thought of myself as deadpan until someone wrote an article about me about a year after I was doing comedy. There was a paper called the 'Boston Phoenix,' and someone wrote a description of what I was doing and that's where I first saw 'deadpan.'

I like George Carlin's jokes. I like his humor. He's one of my heroes, and I like what he did with talking about everyday things.

What I like about the jokes, to me it's a lot of logic, no matter how crazy they are. It has to make absolute sense, or it won't be funny.