Janeane Garofalo Quotations

Men are allowed to age. Men are allowed to gain weight. Men are allowed to be quirky looking.

I don't have a good work ethic. I have a real casual relationship with hours.

Let's be very honest about what this is about. It's not about bashing Democrats, it's not about taxes, they have no idea what the Boston tea party was about, they don't know their history at all. This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up.

Is being an idiot like being high all the time?

German accents and Hassidic accents aren't that romantic. They're more harsh. Although Hebrew, when spoken by certain people, sounds beautiful. There's this beautiful woman I know who speaks Hebrew, and when she speaks, it's so attractive. Maybe it's who's speaking it.

When I see the American flag, I go, 'Oh my God, you're insulting me.'

I guess I just prefer to see the dark side of things. The glass is always half-empty. And cracked. And I just cut my lip on it. And chipped a tooth.

To combat social awkwardness, I would just act like I couldn't be bothered - that kind of aloof persona or aloof demeanor. It's so off-putting.

The world would be better off with multiple superpowers. When Communist USSR was a superpower, the world was better off.

Let's put it this way: I don't have a good work ethic. I have a real casual relationship with hours. I don't understand why, in entertainment, the hours are as long as they are. It seems like everything takes forever, and no one can tell you why, exactly.

I don't really have funny things to say about politics. I wish I did, but I don't.

I'm a walker. I enjoy walking, which I think psychologically expresses my feelings of wanting liberation without exerting myself too much.

I can do most anything and not have a problem with it. The only time I have negative attention is when I run naked through the streets brandishing a handgun.

I would have to say loneliness is next to uncleanliness.

To me, there is no greater act of courage than being the one who kisses first.

Here's what the right-wing has in, there's no shortage of the natural resources of ignorance, apathy, hate, fear. As long as those things are in the collective conscious and unconscious, the Republicans will have some votes.

I remember the old Times Square from when I was younger, and there was a seedy thrill to it. Some of that is gone, which I have a little bit of nostalgia for.

I'm not specifically attached to anything other than trying to, in my personal life, fight against where I see right wing thinking. Whether it be around my dinner table or on the street or somebody reading the New York Post.

You know, there's nothing more interesting than seeing a bunch of racists become confused and angry at a speech they're not quite certain what he's saying.

The glass is always half empty. And cracked. And I just cut my lip on it. And chipped a tooth.

I absolutely realize that a celebrity spokesperson is not ideal.

I love a nice cooking show. It's as aesthetically pleasing as any other thing that tempts the senses, I suppose.

I say at this point, for different reasons, Bush and Hussein are both very threatening to world peace and to deny that is to be incredibly naive.

Iraq is a manufactured conflict for the sake of geopolitical dominance in the area.

Nobody ever starts out to make a mediocre, commercial film. You always think it's going to be something. And then, once you're done with your shooting, you have no control. You're just done, as an actor.

I don't enjoy sparring with the audience. It devastates me.

I don't think Hollywood was trying to do anything with me. In fact, they lost interest pretty quick. I think I got lucky, briefly, in the '90s, and it just so happened that those movies were the opportunities that came my way. Then it just kind of stopped.

When Communist U.S.S.R. was a superpower, the world was better off. The right-wing media is trying to marginalize the peace movement.

I've seen other comics, with great pleasure, watching their own specials, and I don't know how or why they do it.

Sometimes people say I'm a political comedian, which, actually I'm not. I'm a comedian who sometimes discusses politics, culture - again, the word 'politics' to me is just life.

A lot of the hate mail I get is clearly misogynist. I am a proud liberal, feminist woman, and the hate mail I get about those three things is not about me.

I'm not a cook. I like to watch the Food Network, but I don't like to cook.

I have yet to meet very many people in the press who are really, truly interested in writing a good story or getting at the truth. Most press people, when they come into an article, have an angle that they want already, so they need points to support that angle, whatever the angle may be.

I don't really have a theatre background at all.

I am not a person that is particularly tethered to fashion, which I think is obvious to anyone who's seen me.

I'm a sucker for any guy with an accent with any kind.

I mostly get takeout, I have to admit - I don't know if that's something to be ashamed of. I'm not much of a cook.

I would say just in general, in life, I'm more willing to be animated as a person, and so obviously onstage as well.

I'm not a disciplined writer.

Leaving your ears open to the suggestions of others only closes the mind's eye, thereby creating a type of spiritual glaucoma.

I feel like the American people are being lied to and manipulated. President Bush is trying to force 9/11 and Saddam together.

A war is going to destroy our economy even further. It's going to be a threefold humanitarian disaster.

I would say that, unfortunately, the word liberal has been redefined over the last 30 years as if it is a bad thing. But liberalism is a great American philosophy. Being a liberal is one of the best things you can be. I don't think they get a fair shake at all in the conservative mainstream media. So maybe there's some intimidation there.

I was a 36C or D, and at 5' 1'', I knew that being a small person with big boobs standing in front of an audience was not going to be easy. It would be really hard to get people to pay attention to me without mocking me. Getting a breast reduction to prepare for my career was no different from people who work to get good grades to get into a good college to get into a good graduate school to get a good job. I went down to a B cup, and it was the best thing in the whole world.

Sex is the quickest way to ruin a friendship.

You young people with your twittering and your creating of content. Or what is it - queefing? I don't know what you young people are calling it.

I'm sorry for being me. I won't ever do it again.

All roads lead to my dogs, don't they?

Until as women we all say, No! We are not going to starve ourselves, nothing is going to change. We're our own worse enemies sometimes but I still blame men.

I'm almost 46. You become no longer even regarded in a sexual way. As you get older you're just taken out of that realm. So it's not anything that particularly confronts me very much at all.

You know George W. Bush is a war-time president, he says - proudly. Guess what. War is failure! When you are at war, you have failed! When you have gone to a war of choice and lied about it, you're a double-triple, triple-quadruple failure! Or a warlord. It's called a warlord in other countries. A war time president here. One man's ceiling I guess is another man's floor. George Bush is a warlord. He's a failure!

Well I don't know what the city of Hollywood knows about foreign policy, but do I know that a lot of people do learn and educate themselves about policy and I don't have to be a policy expert to know that this will be a disaster.

If you aren't overly effusive or really nicey-nice with the press, you get a reputation for being outspoken or difficult.

There's nothing wrong with the word conspiracy. It just means 'to breathe together'.

I don't understand why, in entertainment, the hours are as long as they are. It seems like everything takes forever, and no one can tell you why exactly.

My hell is going to be the stairmaster wing of Dante's inferno, where they're gonna tape my feet to the pedals and the only music I get is Michael Bolton karaoke style.

Yes, I think lots of people are eager to obtain weapons of mass destruction. But there's no evidence that he (Hussein) has weapons of mass destruction. There's been no evidence of him testing nuclear weapons. We have people that are in our face with nuclear weapons. We've got Iran and North Korea. We've got a problem with Pakistan. You know, I don't know what to say about that. There's a whole lot of people that are going nuclear. And I think that Saddam Hussein is actually, with the evidence, the least able to use nuclear weapons and the least obvious offender in that area at this moment.

I don't hate myself, as a general rule. I'd say the best way to describe it is that I have moments of self-loathing at fairly regular intervals.

Anthony Weiner deserves to be supported and hopefully he will be mayor of New York one day. I'm serious. He is a Democrat [who] actually fights for the things liberals and progressive and rational people care about. I don't know why he's being thrown under the bus. He hasn't done any - he hasn't broke any laws,

Without liberals we wouldn't have unions. We wouldn't have environmental protections. We wouldn't have seat belts or birth control or the ACLU! Any of these things!

Anybody who French bashes just might as well wear a badge that says 'I am a follower! I don't think for myself and I have no idea what I'm talking about.' That would be a French basher.

Herman Cain is probably well-liked by some of the Republicans because it hides the racist elements of the Republican Party, conservative movement and tea party movement. People like Karl Rove like to keep the racism very covert and so Herman Cain provides this great opportunity so he can say, 'Look: This is not a racist anti-immigrant, anti-female, anti-gay movement. Look: We have a black man.' And look he's polling well and he won a straw poll.

But let me ask you this though, first and foremost: who's your favorite Spice Girl? Mine is Sporty Spice and I'll tell you why. You know what? She might not be as aesthetically pleasant as the rest but she'll do a backflip and steal your heart.

No no no! Don't clap! No no no, you make me seem like I'm like a prophet or something and I'm so not!

because we don't have a Fairness Doctrine, and because we have further media consolidation, and because we have a craptastic corporate media, WE DON'T HAVE NEWS! We don't have an informed populous and we don't have a democracy... Everyone in the world knows that America, (in its current state, because of right-wingers) that the right wing arm of this country (that speaks for this country unfortunately) has no credibility when it comes to human rights or independent media.

To a right-winger, unions are awful. Why do right-wingers hate unions? Because collective bargaining is the power that a worker has against the corporation. Right-wingers hate that.

When Communist U.S.S.R. was a superpower, the world was better off. The right-wing media is trying to marginalize the peace movement.

The inked fingers and the position of them, which is gonna be a 'Daily Show' photo already, of them signaling in this [Nazi salute] manner, as if they have solidarity with the Iraqis who braved physical threats against their lives to vote as if somehow these inked-fingered Republicans have something to do with that.

I would prefer to be well-liked in any and all situations.

I do not enjoy when people don't like me.

You just need an opportunity and then you yourself have to do a good job, and then you hope that people go, 'Oh yeah, I forgot about her.'

I was thrilled to work opposite Carl Reiner and Robert De Niro. Mr. Reiner was very chatty and delightful, but I learned that if you want Robert De Niro to like you, don't speak at all, and he'll be friendly to you.

It's been hard in entertainment as a 45-year-old woman to find jobs. They get fewer and far between if you're older, unless you're one of the few lucky ones who work constantly, like Meryl Streep.

You can't have cinema by committee if you're trying to do it well.

TV, it's a director's medium, and they wanna make it look interesting. To be rehearsing mostly for the sake of where you're standing so they can do the lighting, that's what I don't like.

People think that you are a nasty, selfish person if you don`t want to have children.

Irrational crushes, infatuations, or obsessions. Whatever you want to label it, it's important to reach out to others.

There is no blacklist. In the first place, in the entertainment business, money talks, bullshit walks. So Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins won't be blacklisted because they are bankable stars. In the second place, if you are a woman, the only things you're going to be blacklisted for in Hollywood are body fat and aging.

Every year my family would pile into the car for our vacation and drive 80 trillion miles just to prove we couldn't get along in any setting.

Rejection kills, disappointment only maims.

If you don't do any self-examinations or see a doctor ever, you'll live forever. That's how you do it. The diagnosis is what gets you. You just have a don't ask, don't tell policy with any and all bodily functions.

Silence does not equal patriotism. Obedience is not the American way.

Pedestrian's rights - because we live in California, I've got to address this issue. I don't know where on the fence I am about that. I suppose if I'm walking, I'm all for it, but if I'm driving, that's a whole other can of worms.

Sometimes the critics review me harshly for not being critical of government but it's not me who has said I was political.

For some reason I get advertised when I travel as a political comedian, which I'm not. Sometimes I talk about it and sometimes I don't.

So, apparently, if you are a pre-sentient mass of cells, this country will protect you and your rights to the n-th degree. If you have made the mistake of becoming an Iraqi citizen, apparently we can just drop bombs on you with impunity.

We're our own worst enemies a lot of the time, but I still blame men.

You can tell a lot about a person by how excited they are to do the Macarena.

Sage advice? If you're drunk, stay away from the phone. You can't get the answering machine message back.

He [God] just seems so man-made to me. There are so many theories, and not everyone can be right. It's human nature to need a religious crutch, and I don't begrudge anyone that. I just don't need one.

What has Iraq done to us?

Historically the mainstream media has never been particularly friendly to any socially progressive ideas.

I actually was class clown, but I don't know how that happened because I've never been considered an outwardly funny person-as the people in this room will attest.

I did not support Operation Desert Fox.

I think I failed miserably on NewsRadio. I was very nervous because of the caliber of the cast - especially Dave Foley - so I think I did a terrible job.

I got mugged. And they got my knapsack with my comedy notebook in it. So if anybody see two cholos bombing at the Funny Bone chain, that would be them. Just give me a jingle.

Should have dogs before they have kids. Everybody.

You just did a whole read-through. The lie that brought us into war was that Iraq was a threat to us. Well, now it is a threat. Now it is a terrorist hotbed. The fiction is now reality. And now we have to deal with it. It was an attempt at a corporate takeover. This was about oil. It wasn't about human rights. It's not about human rights.

Blood may be thicker than water, but it is still sticky, unpleasant and generally nauseating.

I can't wait for the next fad though, and I predict it's going to be Pennsylvania dutch culture, very Amish. It's going to be bonnets and butter churns.