Netflix stand-up star and “Saturday Night Live” alum Mulaney has always been open about his past struggles. He recently checked into rehab for 60 days for alcohol and cocaine addiction.
John Mulaney was born on August 26, 1982 in Chicago, Illinois, USA as John Edmund Mulaney. He is a writer and actor, known for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), John Mulaney: Kid Gorgeous at Radio City (2018) and Saturday Night Live (1975).
These 25 John Mulaney quotes will help you learn how to laugh at yourself, and how to make fun of others and enjoy the life.
1. The more you do stuff, the better you get at dealing with how you still fail at it a lot of the time.
2. I look back on being 17 and think, ‘Oh my God, how did I not die?’
3. You can do good work simply staying up all night and eating nothing but junk food, but probably not in the long term.
4. I like making fun of myself a lot. I like being made fun of, too. I’ve always enjoyed it. There’s just something really, really funny about someone tearing into me.
5. Things have to be funny first, and if they want to have a point, that’s awesome.
6. I like making fun of myself a lot. I like being made fun of, too. I’ve always enjoyed it. There’s just something really, really funny about someone tearing into me.
7. I never knew you were supposed to push off of your feet when you walked. And I tried it, and I walked much faster.
8. You can’t always see both sides of the story. Eventually, you have to pick a side and stick with it. No more equivocating. You have to commit.
9. All my money is in a savings account. My dad has explained the stock market to me maybe 75 times. I still don’t understand it.
10. Being president looks like the worst job in the world.
11. I just watched a ton of comedy and saw a ton of different styles, and eventually you think, ‘Oh, yeah, I could be like that.’
12. I love comedians that dive into politics. I personally don’t feel comfortable, with my background, weighing in unless I have a take that I think is funny enough that I would put it in front of an audience.
13. I don’t make plans anymore. So I’m not living minute to minute.
14. My childhood was completely dominated by Bill Clinton and the OJ trial. I don’t think we had a family dinner where one didn’t come up.
15. My dad is and was very funny and had a really dry sense of humor, which, as a kid, seemed un-fun. But in retrospect, it’s kind of hilarious.
16. I have too many influences to name. I like a wide variety of stuff, which I think has been helpful. I liked every comedian I saw on TV growing up in the ’80s. Every comedian.
17. Nick Kroll, A.D. Miles, Chelsea Peretti – those were the people I was always doing open mics with.
18. If someone had written a review saying, ”Oh, Hello’ is stupid,’ we would have said, ‘Yeah, it is. You’re absolutely right.’ That people liked it was extremely cool.
19. If something is very, very funny but possibly controversial, if it’s truly funny, then it’s worth doing. Things aren’t worth doing for the sake of being controversial.
20. I’m pretty self-critical about everything I’ve ever done: stand-up, ‘SNL.’
21. I plan to join the ‘SNL’ band as a maraca player and stand behind saxophonist Lenny Pickett. That way they will at least cut to me before commercial breaks. I’ll be sure to look right into camera.
22. I never turn on the crowd. Sometimes, you think it’s a terrible show, and then afterward, sometimes people say they really liked it. So turning on the crowd is only going to alienate the few people who might like it. What do I do in that situation? Get through it.
23. When you have something that you did so many jobs on and were so front and center on, and then people dislike it, you want to learn lessons from it, and you want to move on, and you want to move on too fast.
24. Stand-up for me is just my opinions on things, so it wouldn’t be as fun translated into a sketch. Nor would a sketch be as fun if it were me standing there saying it.
25. I still like to turn on the TV and watch whatever’s on.