Top 100 Patton Oswalt Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “The man is clear in his mind. But his soul is mad.”

— Patton Oswalt

52. “I can’t say that I ever abided nerd stereotypes: I was never alone or felt outcast.”

— Patton Oswalt

53. “When you put an album out, you can’t do any material from the album if people are paying to see you.”

— Patton Oswalt

54. “Does anyone act more like an overserious senior citizen with time running out on their chance for immortality than someone in their twenties?”

— Patton Oswalt

55. “Doing ‘Young Adult’ was really reassuring to me in a lot of ways. It confirmed a lot of suspicions I had about great actors.”

— Patton Oswalt

56. “I visited Surrey in the early fall of 1994, and I would return only if I was tasked to kill a demon to save the world. Maybe not even then. Sorry, Surrey. Sorry, world. Yay, hypothetical demon.”

— Patton Oswalt

57. “Imitation leads to exhilaration when you follow it back to its source.”

— Patton Oswalt

58. “The process is to me is going onstage night after night after night after night until I get a new hour. And then once that hour is solidified and recorded, I move on.”

— Patton Oswalt

59. “Yeah, there were a few years in the early nineties where I really began to hate what was valued as funny and just sort of what was valued in stand-up, period.”

— Patton Oswalt

60. “I hate all sidekicks.”

— Patton Oswalt

61. “I’ve gotten very cynical and kind of anhedonic about all the things I have to do to get to do comedy: all the travel, hotels, and airports.”

— Patton Oswalt

62. “Zombies can’t believe the energy we waste on nonfood pursuits.”

— Patton Oswalt

63. “Here’s what I’m afraid of. I know a lot of comedians, friends of mine, who just got into the ‘Doesn’t matter what I say. It doesn’t matter. They’re just gonna laugh anyway.’”

— Patton Oswalt

64. “To get asked to do stuff like ‘United States Of Tara’ and ‘Caprica’ is terrific. I can’t complain.”

— Patton Oswalt

65. “I think the kind of person that gravitates toward New York is a person that’s not so much focused on controlling exactly how they appear and how they exit. They’re more fascinated with the process.”

— Patton Oswalt

66. “Part of being in your twenties is not knowing an ally when you see one.”

— Patton Oswalt

67. “One of my groupies gave me a film that they made, and it ended up being amazing, so I got it shown at South by Southwest. If I can help get their stuff out there, then great.”

— Patton Oswalt

68. “I have to drink this much to be as unfunny as you.”

— Patton Oswalt

69. “I’ve had some pretty good arguments with people, but I’ve never regretted it. I’ve had people come up where it’s all emotion and no fact. That’s always sad.”

— Patton Oswalt

70. “I don’t want to get into extended conversations with people on MySpace, because there are friends I have extended conversations with every day.”

— Patton Oswalt

71. “Any comedian who tells you how dark and dangerous they are, they’re not dark and dangerous.”

— Patton Oswalt

72. “I want to experience as many different tastes, sights, emotions, conflicts, and cultures as possible, so that I can expand the canvas of my memory and enrich my comedy.”

— Patton Oswalt

73. “If I were to just focus on stand-up, I could actually, paradoxically enough, be home way more, because I would leave on a Friday, go do a couple theaters Friday, Saturday, maybe Sunday, come home.”

— Patton Oswalt

74. “It’s like our country is being run by a bunch of bad alcoholic dads right now.”

— Patton Oswalt

75. “I really had to imagine the kind of person that I would have been if I had never left my hometown. I don’t think I would have been a very pleasant person.”

— Patton Oswalt

76. “I never said that movies were struggling behind TV. I’m just saying that movies have a better creative cache.”

— Patton Oswalt

77. “Knock on wood, my groupies tend to be very artistic, creative people – sometimes way more creative than I am.”

— Patton Oswalt

78. “I’m grateful that I had that uphill battle for 10 years of going onstage and having nobody know who I was, because you have to win them over.”

— Patton Oswalt

79. “As unhealthy as I am, I’m weirdly aware of exactly how my body functions.”

— Patton Oswalt

80. “I mean, the death in the late eighties and early nineties really shook out a lot of hacks. The pond just sort of dried up for a lot of really bad comedians.”

— Patton Oswalt

81. “If someone like this were to like me, to like my comedy, and to like the way I conduct myself professionally, it would mean that I suck as a person.”

— Patton Oswalt

82. “Every zombie story is fundamentally about a breakdown of order, with the infrastructure intact. That infrastructure might be on fire, yes.”

— Patton Oswalt

83. “With acting, you see some of the kids are literally just off the street, untrained, and they are great. And others are off the street, untrained, and kind of horrible.”

— Patton Oswalt

84. “All the truly great stand-ups say, “I go onstage, and I work on jokes. The inspiration will happen while I’m doing my work.” To me, in the end, the surest thing is work.”

— Patton Oswalt

85. “I like to write, I like to do stand-up, I like to act.”

— Patton Oswalt

86. “Movies, to him and the majority of the planet, are an enhancement to a life. The way a glass of wine complements a dinner. I’m the other way around. I’m the kind of person who eats a few bites of food so that my stomach can handle the full bottle of wine I’m about to drink.”

— Patton Oswalt

87. “If you actually do cold readings, it’s very close to how people actually talk, because you’re experiencing these thoughts anew every moment, and trying to make them come out coherently.”

— Patton Oswalt

88. “Even if it’s other people, like on MySpace pages, we’re just as collective of enthusiasts now. That seems to be the world we’re in.”

— Patton Oswalt

89. “I have some shorter stories coming out in other books early next year. I might be pitching a re-vamp of Ghost Rider in the spring. We’ll see.”

— Patton Oswalt

90. “But for the most part, for the majority of a stand-up audience, you better have new stuff they’ve not heard. And if you put an album out, just consider that material gone. At least that’s how I see it.”

— Patton Oswalt

91. “If you play comedic scenes like they’re really serious, then it’s so much more funny than if you’re going for a laugh.”

— Patton Oswalt

92. “I’ve hung out in the writer’s room a few times, but the fact is we’ve got such a good writing staff, I don’t want to get my peanut butter fingerprints on anything.”

— Patton Oswalt

93. “There’s nothing wrong with doing comedies, and I’m not against comedies, either, but I always want to do stuff that keeps me off my guard and gets me out of my comfort zone.”

— Patton Oswalt

94. “The truly great actors, like Charlize Theron, are just like, “I’m an actor. For hire. I show up, I do my job.” There’s no “I’m just waiting for the inspiration.” They just do their jobs. They say, “Let’s go over the scene a few times and get it.””

— Patton Oswalt

95. “You just do as many shows as you can to hone what it is you’re working on.”

— Patton Oswalt

96. “Even if you’re popular, there are times when you just feel like you’re not a part of things.”

— Patton Oswalt

97. “Beyond any role that I ever had, really early on as a stand-up, I would see actors decide to try it and they would bomb miserably. What I realized was that stand-up, acting and writing are all their own disciplines.”

— Patton Oswalt

98. “The idea of, ‘The journey is the destination’ is put into action by browsing in an indie record store. Besides, a human being is a much better guide than a ‘More Like This’ link on the internet.”

— Patton Oswalt

99. “Any acting job that I ever got, I always treated it like I was a neophyte, I didn’t know what I was doing and I was going to work just as hard as I do on my stand-up.”

— Patton Oswalt

100. “I’m always trying out new stuff onstage. That’s where I do all my writing.”

— Patton Oswalt