I don’t think life is that important. It’s just not. It is not.

People get too excited… about life. “Oh, life!” Fuck you.

Make a list of every shitty thing ever, that’s in life.

Life is okay. I like life. I like it. I don’t need it. I’d be fine without it.

I like life, though. I do. You know how much I like life?
I have never killed myself.

That’s how much I like it. That’s exactly how much I like it, with a razor-thin margin.
I like it precisely enough to not kill myself.

It’s an option, though. It’s totally an option. I mean, I’m 49. I have two kids.
I’ve flipped through the brochure a few times. I’ve thought of killing myself just to win an argument.

You’re not supposed to talk about suicide, even to your shrink.
You ever go to a shrink and they’re like, “Have you had thoughts… of suicide?” And you’re like, “No, because if I say yes, you’ll press a button”, and folks will run in and hold me… “Hold him down!”

You should be able to talk about it.

The whole world is just made of people who didn’t kill themselves today.
That’s who’s here. It’s all of us that went, “Okay, fuck it, I’ll keep doing it.”

It’s… It’s an interesting thing about life. Life can get very difficult, very sad, very upsetting.

But you don’t have to do it. You don’t have to do it. You don’t have to do anything. You never have to do anything because you can kill yourself. If they send you a letter from Motor Vehicles, come in and: “No, I don’t. I’ll kill myself.” You can do that. You can do that once. But you can do it.

It’s interesting because even when life gets bad, people choose it over nothing. Even the worst versions of life, even a shitty, shitty life, is worth living, apparently. ‘Cause folks are living the fuck out of them.

Have you ever seen somebody, you’re like, “He should kill himself. Why did he not…”

Ever been driving and you look in the next car, you’re like, “Ugh, shit. I wish I hadn’t looked in that car. That was difficult to glance at… let alone being it.”

Just a guy in a tan car. Nobody chooses tan. Nobody picks tan for their car. They give you tan. “Is that mine?” “Yeah, it’s yours, fucking loser. Made in tan.” They shouldn’t even make tan cars. It’s mean to make them.

You look over, you see a guy in a tan car with dents all over it and a garbage bag for a window. [mimicking bag flapping]

What is holding up his suicide? What is delaying it? What is keeping him from stopping being that? And what would it take? What would it take? What would it take?

Both windows are garbage bags?

Is that…? Seriously, do you know how much misery is involved in a garbage bag for a window?

Do you know how many separate moments of shit misery?
“They canceled my insurance. I broke my window. Duct tape.” [ripping noise]

You’re dead way longer than you’re alive.
That’s mostly what you’re ever gonna be.
You’re all just dead people that haven’t died yet.

xPeople ask what happens after you die? Well, a lot of things. there’s Super Bowl, there are parades.

Because some things are.. and some things are NOT. You can’t have fucking nothing isnt.. then nothing wouldn’t be.

The only time you look in your neighbour’s bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don’t look in your neighbor’s bowl to see if you have as much as them.

Murder her! You’re homeless! Life is kicking you in the balls every day! Start murdering and eating well. Why wouldn’t you do that?

(Louie’s mind voice when looking at a homeless guy who doesn’t understand his priorities, standing next to a random regular girl.)

Stories are the only thing that you have that’s really only yours.

A lot of people have money, other possessions and ideas.

But your stories are the only one that you’re the only one that has them, and then just by telling them everybody else has them.

So that’s why I think stories are great.

I couldn’t believe what I just saw!

That the misery in this country at that time was so calculable, and so predictable that this guy thought:

“My shoe is broken. Oh, there’s a child! He’s sure to have some glue in his hand. Because the state of our nation is so wretched.”

And I looked, and he looked at me, and I was startled, and then he laughed. And I laughed.
And he’s the only person I had any contact with in the whole of the Soviet Union.

And I realized this is why I came here.

To find out how bad life gets, and then when it’s this bad, it’s still fucking funny.

(On how having a humor sense gets you through even the worst phases of life.)

Carlin’s idea that you throw everything away and you start over again.

Well okay, I thought. When you’re done telling joking about airplanes and dogs, you throw those away.

What do you got left? You can only dig deeper.

You start talking about your feelings, and who you are.

And then you do those jokes and they’re gone.

You got to dig deeper. So you start thinking about your fears and nightmares. And doing jokes about that. And they’re gone.. and then you start going into weird shit…

eventually you get to your balls.

It’s a process I watched him do my whole life. And I started to do it.

You wear clothes made by children your age professionally. You don’t get to say “eeew”.

(To his baby daughter who is unable to appreciate the fact that she gets to live an American Life while there are kids her same age in Africa who has to make a living by making clothes for American children.)