Quotes from Paul F. Tompkins

The old Johnny Carson 'Tonight Show' was great in that he was so good with the guests, and it was not about him. I think he was very smart in realizing 'I have plenty of screentime on this show. I do my monologue and we do sketches and stuff like that.' During the interview, he really made it about trying to bring the best thing out of the guest.

You know, back when I was a kid who wanted to be in show business, everybody on TV wore nice clothes. They were very glamorous when they would be on the 'Tonight Show.' All the dudes wore suits and ties and that just seemed like real show business to me.

I'm not afraid of you, 'American Idol.'

I think, in a way, the stand-up prepped me for the improv, because I do a lot of riffing in my stand-up.

Politics is a thing that is kind of the same over and over and over again. But we have to find new ways of poking fun at it and letting the air out of people and satirizing things that are worthy of satire.

The way we get our news is very important, and the idea that the media doesn't always do right by us, and that they focus on things they shouldn't for ratings, is very important, and it's absolutely worthy of ridicule.

I long ago vowed, as Batman did before me, never to make fun of stuff that people couldn't help. Because it's (1) easy and (2) not fair. There are plenty of things that people have complete control over that are worthy of ridicule.

In an effort to devote more time, energy and focus to fewer projects, I've had to make some tough decisions, and one such decision was 'retiring' from 'Speakeasy.'

I think that we all enjoy silliness to varying degrees but I think everyone can enjoy a relatable thing if it is expressed in a funny way.

What I do with impressions, I try not to be mean-spirited. To me, it's just about being silly.

Obviously a president can't rule as a king and ban all guns. But I think we need a president who is going to make sure that there is gun control and that people still feel like their freedoms are intact.

When the response to comedy becomes cheering instead of laughing, that is so irritating. It's the worst.

When Huell Howser died, James Adomian had done Huell Howser for years. As crazy as that impression was, James genuinely loved Huell Howser.

There's so much being said about Donald Trump already, all the time, and the more you joke about him, the more you risk making the same jokes other people are making about him.

I love a small dinner party - let's say six people, max, were everybody's having the same conversation. That's my favorite thing in the world.

We all forget that when a TV network says, 'Look, we're broke,' it means that they're not making as much money as they would like to be making. They're still making millions and millions of dollars - they're just not making billions and billions of dollars.

My first car was a 2011 Mini Cooper, because I only learned to drive in 2010.

Part of our job is to dig deep and rediscover the joy that we had when we were first starting out. Also, when you gain responsibility, if you are the host of a TV show and you have responsibilities as a producer and a writer and so forth, you then have to deal with the mechanics of it, which is not always fun.

I make my money from a lot of different sources, so I'm not depending on any one thing to really pull through.

I think I've almost killed myself 1,000 times eating some sandwich as fast as I possibly could and almost choking. It's a miracle that I'm still alive.

An audience can become a mob very easily.

I don't find monkeys inherently funny.

The thing you have to be on guard against, more than anything, is self-sabotage. You have to make sure you're not your own worst enemy.

As much as I love live performance and as much fun as it can be to travel around, it really is nice to be able to stay at home and make a living and pay the mortgage and spend time with my wife.