Top 150 Anthony Jeselnik Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “When I was little, I would burn ants with a magnifying glass. But now that I’m older, I’m more of a cat guy.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

102. “I had a happy childhood in a nice suburban area, pretty idyllic, upper middle class and very, very white. My dad is an attorney. My mother is a housewife. They had five kids in seven years: me, my brother, and three sisters. I’m the oldest. We were all very active. My mother was exhausted.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

103. “I can stand by a tweet. But Comedy Central said they couldn’t publicly support me, unless I deleted it. I wasn’t about to tell the people who work for me that they didn’t have jobs anymore because I wasn’t going to delete a stupid tweet.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

104. “I hated my mom for not letting me play football as a kid. So when I have kids someday, I guarantee they’ll never meet their grandmother.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

105. “Halloween is just a made up holiday, created by the razor blade industry.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

106. “When I was seven, I broke my leg playing soccer. Just to feel something.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

107. “I would love to DJ the royal wedding. Just so I could play Candle in the Wind non-stop.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

108. “It was important to me to be cool as a comedian. I didn’t want to be a crowd-pleaser who sent out the vibe of, “I need you guys.” I wanted to be so cool that the audience could leave and I would still be killing, that I didn’t want to have to rely on them or need them. That really appealed to me.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

109. “I didn’t care about the backlash. I think the reason it was so severe was because they didn’t know anything about me in New Zealand. If I had made jokes about a shark attack in the US, no one would have cared.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

110. “In a late-night monologue, it’s not just about being funny; you have to come off as knowledgeable. You have to cultivate a persona of trust and intelligence and likeability.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

111. “I try to retire jokes as soon as I can once I put them on an album. But I can’t think of anything I just stopped doing for no reason.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

112. “I had written for Jimmy Kimmel and Sarah Silverman in the past. Jimmy had a different voice, and different priorities. He couldnt be the bad guy in the joke; he couldnt upset people, really.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

113. “I never go see live comedy shows because I just sit in the audience thinking, “Here’s what I would say. Here’s what I would do if I got up there.” It drives me crazy.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

114. “Everyone gets laid off and everyone in Hollywood gets unemployment for six months while they’re looking for a new job. So I would just do stand-up for six months and think I was really making it, and when my unemployment ran out, I had to get another job immediately.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

115. “It seemed fun to play a villain on stage and I wanted my jokes to be so good that I could just calmly tell them on stage.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

116. “Im not the voice of reason; Im more the guy using these offensive topics as fodder to raise tension in a joke.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

117. “I don’t have a type, really. But I’ve always been more attracted to girls who yell fire.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

118. “An offended audience member repeating a comedian’s act from memory is worse than, literally, anything.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

119. “In the second grade, I would just get bored and a joke would pop into my head and I would have to say it. It was almost like I had some brilliant novel in my head that I had to get down, and I would interrupt class all the time and get in trouble.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

120. “I think the reason I became funny was because if I made people laugh, they would let me keep talking.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

121. “I was always cutting words. I even would write my jokes in my notebook. I still do this, almost like a poem.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

122. “I don’t have much racial stuff in my act. And no one’s ever really threatened me to my face. Threats on the internet don’t bother me so much.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

123. “I think a theater show is a pure version of me doing my material. The theater crowd is a bit more polite, there really aren’t hecklers, and there are a lot of people there to see me, and they’re excited about the jokes and hanging out with me for a show.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

124. “I try to write three jokes every morning, although I don’t know what they are. I write them as fast as I can, then I put them away for a month. So I couldn’t even tell you what they are, or if they’re good. I just assume they weren’t.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

125. “I’m not a comedy writer, I’m a comedian, so I only write stuff that I would want to say.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

126. “Disgusting. I just found my grandpa’s Viagra. I swear, I almost puked from eating so many.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

127. “Watching soccer just makes me wish I was watching Foosball.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

128. “I don’t think Metallica sits around all day wondering why country music fans don’t embrace them.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

129. “I will never understand how a mother can kill her own baby and not get away with it.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

130. “I like the idea of being the funny guy in the dramatic thing, playing a hit man with a weird sense of humor.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

131. “On the show, you have to be more charismatic, a little smoother, but I think I can still be that prince of darkness. You just have to learn the tricks of the TV trade as well.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

132. “Tom Cruise’s pre-nup lets him keep his money, the kids and Katie Holmes.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

133. “If I tell a joke on stage and the crowd laughs for a minute, I stand there for a minute and enjoy them laughing before I go on to the next joke. On TV, if I stand there for a minute while they laugh, I look like an idiot who can’t remember the next joke.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

134. “I always loved comedy, but it never seemed like something that I could do professionally.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

135. “The true meaning of Christmas is actually centuries of gullibility.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

136. “The driving force behind doing everything that I’ve been doing as a stand-up is having problems with authority and not liking to be told what to do.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

137. “Ellen Barkin, your upcoming TV show ‘The New Normal’ premiers on September 11th. September 11th, that sounds about right. Every clip I’ve seen feels like I’m watching a third tower collapse.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

138. “I could see myself adopting a kid someday. But, obviously, I’d prefer it to be aborted.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

139. “Every Sunday my dad calls to ask if I went to church. And every Sunday I lie and say: Sorry. Wrong Number.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

140. “One of my favorite things on the show was just getting to do my own monologue and talking about someone who killed themselves, or making a joke about some horrible tragedy – I love being able to fight for and get on TV. I just think it’s so different.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

141. “I enjoyed writing for someone elses voice, but I wasnt very good at it.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

142. “I don’t want to wake up with cops surrounding my bed tonight.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

143. “I’m fascinated by offensive subject matter. Always have been. It is very natural to me, as any teach I’ve ever had growing up could attest.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

144. “I got into comedy because I wanted to get into writing.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

145. “I like seeing what the comedian thinks is funny, not just what they think I’ll think is funny.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

146. “I killed a squirrel once with a car. Twice with a tennis racket.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

147. “I don’t think people shouldn’t try to be edgy, but you have to take what the audience says to you in consideration.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

148. “I guess I prefer the laughs. I couldn’t do a whole set of just shocks, but I like throwing a fastball inside every now and then to keep people on their toes.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

149. “That’s the worst way you can hear about comedy material: from a third person’s blog story that they wrote when they were upset.”

— Anthony Jeselnik

150. “I never knew if I would get my own show, but I knew I loved stand-up.”

— Anthony Jeselnik