Nick Kroll Quotations

In high school, I went to a place called the Mountain School. It's on a farm in Vermont, and I read Emerson and Thoreau and ran around the woods. Now I go hiking with a bunch of my comedy buddies. We talk about our emotions. I also do a lot of writing on hikes, just to get the blood flowing and the ideas moving.

My friends and family always thought I was pretty funny, but I don't know if they thought I was get-my-own-show funny.

Anyone you give a ton of money to is going to go slightly crazy. I don't think comedians are particularly special in that regard; they just are better or more vocal in their expressions of their craziness.

Whether it's corporate investigations or comedy, there are certain inherent truths to trying to get what you want while trying to be a decent person doing it.

There's just a feeling, when you're just an actor - I have great admiration for people who are just actors. I don't understand it, the idea of waiting to get cast, being at the whim of others. I find it incredibly powerless and frightening, so that's why I've been constantly trying to create my own content.

One of the worst things about being an actor, besides people being nice to you and getting free stuff all the time - but really, one of the worst things is not knowing what's coming next. You could shoot a pilot, and they could have you on hold for six months waiting to find out what is going to happen with the show, and you're locked into it.

Contrary to widespread belief, I do know something about science.

My friends, we all improvise together usually. So we write what I think is a good script but always leave a lot of room to find stuff on the day; and we always do find something. That's the advantage to having actors who are, in their own right, writers.

My thinking is, if we're setting out to make comedy in which nothing is off limits, then everybody is fair game.

I would be psyched to get a phone call from Al Sharpton. I need to find out who does his hair. It's beautiful. It's a gorgeous mane.

I feel incredibly lucky at this moment in my career to get paid to do basically exactly what I always wanted to do. I appreciate that in general. But you know, like any job, a job is a job, and there are days that are going to be boring, or you have a boss you don't like, or people you work with.

A comedian is sort of like a wild animal. It really just depends on where you catch them. Sometimes they want to cuddle up, and sometimes they'll snap at you. But for me, more often than not, if I'm talking to somebody who makes their living in comedy, it'll be a very thoughtful conversation driven from an emotionally honest place.

I found, especially with stand-up, that if a premise works, you can make the joke work. If a premise doesn't work, you can't force it to.

I think my goal was just to do comedy, honestly. It still is. Whatever form that took or takes, it doesn't matter.

Oftentimes the shows that don't work help you get it right.

The one place I've seen something really come together is in editing. Sometimes you can save pieces in a way that you're really shocked.

For me, I was literally trying to stay afloat. I never actually thought I would get my own sketch show. So the idea that one day I would have my own show is pretty wild. But once I got it, I thought, 'Yeah, this is exactly what I always wanted to do.

I came to New York and started doing stand-up and improv, and started auditioning for commercials and voiceovers and stuff. My first job was on a pilot of that prank show called 'Boiling Points' on MTV.

In general in comedy, there are fewer people making a ton of money and a lot more people making a living. For me, the goal is just being able to make exactly the show I wanted to make.

Really, I just love doing comedy. Any form it takes is great, as long as I can keep doing it, you know? If I can do my show and 'The League' while also getting to do other bits, that's awesome.

My experience in TV is that it takes time for shows to find their way.

For me, the best characters are the ones that feel fully formed inside and out, so I try to have a very clear vision of exactly what they would wear, top to bottom, who they are, what their backstory is, what their family situation is, who are their friends, just creating as much of a three-dimensional character [as possible]. Because I think you could do a very broad character, but as long as there's some emotional truth to them you can get away with really crazy things.

Sometimes shows suffer from having many cooks in the kitchen.

I know it's going to sound cheesy, but I love show business. I love doing comedy, I love that I get to do all this with my friends.

I tend to play sort of douchey.

A lot of times, you're circling around a lot of things, and then you find that one person, or that little piece of dialogue, and it doesn't always have to be in person.

In L.A., you really are in your car all day alone, and there's very little public life.

What business would judged on the first week that it's in business?

A job is a job, and there are days that are going to be boring, or you have a boss you don't like, or people you work with.

I think that the web and its various facets are incredibly useful in just building a fan base and getting your chops better.

Seinfeld has his way of telling jokes - and I'm not comparing myself to Seinfeld, his genius is observing the small details of everyday life and finding humor in it.

In New York, you are forced into having very public lives and observing all types of people, what they sound like, what they're reading, what they smell like, what they are listening to, how they talk to their friends.

There's one theory that the funnier a comic is in his act, the more mind-numbingly boring he'll be when he's not holding a microphone.

Like most lazy upper-middle-class kids, American Studies seemed like a fun way to use your knowledge of TV to get an A.

As long as it's not an easy, outdated stereotype and it comes from an interesting or emotionally driven place, then anyone can be made fun of.

I was, like, a history major, and I minored in art and Spanish, but I found myself gravitating toward media studies as time went on.

The immediacy of public interaction is just unbeatable.

This is a perfect example of the power and ridiculousness of a website like Wikipedia. I did give a slightly contentious graduation speech, where I decided not to be funny as my classmates had hoped, which was why I was chosen. I was not valedictorian, that's for sure. Instead, I talked about the failure to communicate between the administration and the teachers and students. That's what was contentious about it. At some point, somebody wrote about that incident on my Wikipedia page. And then somebody added the bit about me exposing my genitals to the crowd.

I guess there should be somewhere on the Internet that feels like a source of sacred truth. But Wikipedia sure isn't it.

Go ahead and make up a ton of lies about me. That's way more interesting than pretending Wikipedia has any real information.

Although I'm a comedian, I'm also an amateur survivalist.

It was easier to know a character's point of view than it was to figure out what your point of view was.

I think that being on the road and doing more and more stand-up has allowed me to figure out... like, I don't think I'll ever be Bill Hicks, but I think I'm figuring out what my opinion is on things.

I like the idea of people getting to know you from different angles and then realizing "That guy is also that guy!" "Oh, he does that!" I really like having a number of different ways to reach people.

I feel like we have so many different ways to express ourselves now, and I relish, I feel very lucky to be doing comedy.

It's a real democratic time for comedy, and I think my special is a sign for that. You don't have to just be a classic stand-up to get a special, or you don't just have to be on Saturday Night Live to do characters and sketch on TV. The web has allowed me to show that there are different ways to make people laugh, and the special is a combination of those things.

For me, the goal wasn't to turn the stand-up special on its head, but to do what I do specifically, and hopefully that reads as something new.

My goal was to do something that incorporated all the stuff I do and have it feel like something new, like it was hopefully taking the stand-up special paradigm and turning it on its head.

People want to consume what you're putting out there, and you can create a really strong following of fans and admirers, and people who are invested in your career and your comedy.

I like to think that the stuff I do is oftentimes collaborative, so to have other people in it felt natural.

I'm really into pandas right now. They're really scratching an itch for me. They're so goddamn cute.

Music was not a big deal to me when I was in middle school. And then I slowly became a big jazz fan. Even more than concerts, a lot of my high school time was spent going to jazz clubs in the city.

Robert Altman made that movie Kansas City about the jazz scene in the city, and we saw that band all together, and that was an amazing show. That's what I got into. I like jazz.

I was going to have Brian La Croix do a cameo on Degrassi. But, unfortunately, the scheduling didn't work out. When I was in Toronto, they weren't shooting. To me, that would've been a pretty crazy meta experience.

It's almost worse because you think that you're mature and classic when you're in the newsie cap jazz phase. It's not a great look, a young person trying to seem old and mature and cultured. That's a summarily not-cool look.

You think you're going to be on TV a year out of college and you're not. Then you tell people and it's embarrassing. And then it's not a big deal at all.

It was sort of in the jam-band era and it was at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester [New York], right where I grew up. I actually went back there a couple years ago when I was on tour for Kroll Show. I performed at that theater, which was really cool to go back to the first place I'd gone to a concert.

My first concert isn't that cool or ironic. I wish it had been like, "My first concert was the Backstreet Boys," but the first concert I went to, I think, was this band called The Samples.

It's always weird to eat something that is a pet elsewhere.

It's not that weird, but when I was in Peru, I ate a guinea pig. If you're going to eat guinea pig, you call it cuy. Cute word for such a cute little animal that I ate a few times.

I had PubLIZity, I had Oh, Hello, I had Bobby and Farley - all of these sketches that were really these duo sketches, but the relationship between them is really what catapulted them forward. A lot of that, I think, came from Wayne and Garth, these two similar guys - they're Midwestern metal guys - but in the end, they're quite different because there's an alpha and a beta. And I think that model became very present for me on Kroll Show.

My best friend, Andrew Goldberg - and this is genuinely not me trying to cross-promote, but this new Netflix show I'm doing called Big Mouth is about me and my best friend, Andrew Goldberg, from childhood - but there was a year when I went to his house after school every day and we watched Wayne's World and ate Doritos.

In real life, you care about other people, but at the end of the day you're like, "I'm acting upon whatever it is that I want or need."

When you're playing something, hopefully, if you're doing your best, you're advocating for your character and you're not trying to think too much.

I like an otter. I like a sea lion. I like a walrus. That's my favorite version of a sea creature.

My first job. I got fired from this MTV prank show, or I didn't make the cut of what ended up being, as we all know, Boiling Points. It was my first professional job and I was bragging.

No doubt there are people who are our guests [ in Oh, Hello] who are more famous, but to me, Mel Brooks is the most famous person. So that was really cool.

Really, more than anything, The 2000 Year Old Man is a huge influence on all of our comedy, but specifically the live version of Oh, Hello.

Mel Brooks came to see Oh, Hello in L.A. Mulaney and I had a meeting with him, and we invited him to come to the show, and he saw the Oh, Hello show live in L.A. To me, he's the most famous person. Having him come to our show that was so inspired by both of us loving The Producers and all his movies.

I've decided to just keep doing Oh, Hello, where I play an older man who thinks he's very cultured. That clearly has not gone away.

I'm sure there are people who say like, "I was wearing weird emo eyeliner," but there's something pretty embarrassing about the jazz phase.

I gave the graduation speech at my high school. Not because I was valedictorian but because the grade voted for me to do it. And I gave a slightly contentious speech. I was a little critical of the administration. But for a long time it said on Wikipedia that I took my balls out and exposed myself to the crowd.

You get to have some bigger comedic moments with some very real dramatic stuff. All that in one makes for a fulfilling artistic job.

The more you're able to understand how to do a good dramatic performance, that can inform your comedy. It all informs one another. And it keeps everything interesting.

You want to be gentle with the people you're working with if you know them.

Don't watch Kroll Show if you don't have a Nielsen box. I honestly don't care. Feel free to DVR it and not watch it because that will somehow help my ratings maybe, but honestly I'm talking to the four of you with a Nielsen box. If you have a Nielsen box, like, who are you? Where do you live? How do I find you? You're a unicorn and I don't believe that you exist.

I have what I guess is medically known as a farting problem.

Everybody gets better looking on TV as shows go on.Even the nerds on "Big Bang Theory" are getting better looking. Their clothes are getting nicer. They're better groomed. It works for them.