Quotes from Brett Gelman

I think that all the Mel Brooks' company of actors is just tremendous. It was a crazy group of genius people. All of them taught me what kind of actor I should be and what was funny.

I love taking on roles that other people have written for me just as much as I take on writing - just not as much of a, 'Oh, that guy.' I want people to start saying, 'Oh, Brett Gelman's new piece is coming out. That's a Brett Gelman movie. That's a a Brett Gelman show.'

Talking is not action. Don't just look at what you say. Look at how you socialize.

I have Janicza solely to thank for my growth as an actor because she saw in me something that other people just weren't seeing, and she knew that I could go beyond the normal, funny 'make-em-ups' that I was doing on an improv stage.

'The Producers' is my favorite movie, and my favorite performances of all time are Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, and I feel like I strive to be a combination of those two guys.

I've definitely seen people get angry or really uncomfortable with stuff I've made in the past. And my stand-up, if you could call what I do stand-up, is quite aggressive, too.

At the end of the day, stand-up comedy is like acting when the audience are the other characters that I'm acting with.

Loss is a part of life, unfortunately, and you've got to just deal with it.

Every white liberal straight man needs to take action and work at unifying all peoples of our sides and stop making women and people of color and the LGBT community fight it out themselves and just pat them on the back. We have to take active roles in supporting them, defending them, and hiring them.

'Dinner' is completely scripted. There are some improv elements, but I'm not interested in pranking people. It's more like a play than standup.

A lot of times, comedic actors are discriminated against. People just assume they can't do something other than what they do, rather than thinking, 'Oh, wait - doing what they do normally is really hard.'

I think that's something that people don't realize enough about when they get into comedy - it's not just about sitting back and observing and saying something funny.

As someone who is on the more liberal side of things, I personally think this side needs to be a little less open. I know that's part of what it means to be on the more liberal side of things, but that trait can no longer really be a part of our makeup. The simple reason for this is that the opposing side uses our openness to their full advantage.

I've always been an actor, even when I was doing improv and my own version of stand up.

I'm all for free speech, and I don't need my viewpoint to be the only viewpoint.

I think that liberal straight white men really need to stop patting themselves on the back for what they think they think and actually take a look at their actions.