John Mulaney is one of the funniest comedians out there today. If you haven’t had the chance to see him live, you are missing out! His stand-up specials are hilarious, and his writing for Saturday Night Live is some of the best in recent memory. In this blog post, we have collected 125 of the funniest John Mulaney quotes for your enjoyment. We hope you laugh as hard as we did!
John Mulaney Quotes
- “Things don’t exist until they exist.” – John Mulaney
- “You know comedy once you’re doing it.” – John Mulaney
- “I don’t look older, I just look worse.” – John Mulaney
- “Most open-mic experiences I had were okay.” – John Mulaney
- “It’s like there’s a horse loose in a hospital.” – John Mulaney
- “13-year olds are the meanest people in the world.” – John Mulaney
- “It’s 100% easier not to do things than to do them.” – John Mulaney
- “You have the moral backbone of a chocolate eclair.” – John Mulaney
- “Why do people shush animals? They’ve never spoken.” – John Mulaney
- “Understudies don’t normally get invited to openings.” – John Mulaney
- “Email viruses bring people together in amazing ways.” – John Mulaney
- “Being president looks like the worst job in the world.” – John Mulaney
- “I still like to turn on the TV and watch whatever’s on.” – John Mulaney
- “If you are a school student, your opinion does not matter.” – John Mulaney
- “It’s wrong to make fun of people but it’s so fun sometimes.” – John Mulaney
- “Just because you’re accurate doesn’t mean you’re interesting.” – John Mulaney
- “I like that idea that what I do might be mainstream—might be.” – John Mulaney
- “I don’t make plans anymore, so I’m not living minute to minute.” – John Mulaney
- “I’ll keep all my emotions right here, and then one day I’ll die.” – John Mulaney
- “In terms of like, instant relief, canceling plans is like heroin.” – John Mulaney
- “I look back on being 17 and think, ‘Oh my God, how did I not die?’” – John Mulaney
- “People having expectations may mean they’ve enjoyed what I’ve done.” – John Mulaney
- “You have your law practice; and me, I have all these fucking markers.” – John Mulaney
- “I like when things are crazy. Something good comes out of exhaustion.” – John Mulaney
- “I never talked to my dad about that, but I figured I’d tell all of you.” – John Mulaney
- “Maybe I just have high self-esteem, but I have a lot that I really enjoy.” – John Mulaney
- “My mom would blame me for things that happened on the news. That is true.” – John Mulaney
- “I’m pretty self-critical about everything I’ve ever done: stand-up, ‘SNL.'” – John Mulaney
- “By 2029, I’ll be drinking moon juice with President Johnathan Taylor Thomas.” – John Mulaney
- “In every case, I find pre-planning noble, but not always that useful in comedy.” – John Mulaney
- “Things have to be funny first, and if they want to have a point, that’s awesome.” – John Mulaney
- “It seems like everyone, everywhere, is super mad about everything, all the time.” – John Mulaney
- “You have an imagination, you have a movie theater in your mind that plays arguments!” – John Mulaney
- “You remember being 12, when you’re like, ‘No one will look at me or I’ll kill myself.’” – John Mulaney
- “My vibe is like, hey you could probably pour soup in my lap and I’ll apologize to you.” – John Mulaney
- “It was so beautiful today that I only watched four hours of Law & Order in my apartment.” – John Mulaney
- “I look like I was just sitting in a room on a chair eating saltines for, like, 28 years.” – John Mulaney
- “I have a lot of stories about being a kid because it was the last time I was interesting.” – John Mulaney
- “You should be able to say, ‘I don’t know.’ That should be an acceptable answer on a test.” – John Mulaney
- “And now there’s new Nazis! I don’t care for these new Nazis and you may quote me on that.” – John Mulaney
- “My vibe is like, ‘Hey, you could probably pour soup in my lap and I’ll apologize to you.’” – John Mulaney
- “I like making fun of myself a lot. I like being made fun of, too. I’ve always enjoyed it.” – John Mulaney
- “I have a lot of stories about being a kid because it was the last time I was interesting.” – John Mulaney
- “It was so beautiful today that I only watched four hours of ‘Law & Order’ in my apartment.” – John Mulaney
- “I am very small and I have no money, so you can imagine the king of stress that I am under.” – John Mulaney
- “I was once on the telephone with Blockbuster Video, which is a very old-fashioned sentence.” – John Mulaney
- “Sometimes, people would say, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ But that just meant, ‘Stop.’” – John Mulaney
- “I am very small and I have no money. So you can imagine the kind of stress that I am under.” – John Mulaney
- “When I walk down the street, I need everybody, all day long, to like me so much. It’s exhausting.” – John Mulaney
- “Nick Kroll, A.D. Miles, Chelsea Peretti – those were the people I was always doing open mics with.” – John Mulaney
- “I quit drinking because I used to drink too much, then I would black out, and I would ruin parties.” – John Mulaney
- “Do you want a salad or fries? That’s like asking, ‘Do you want to go for a jog or freebase cocaine?’” – John Mulaney
- “The more you do stuff, the better you get at dealing with how you still fail at it a lot of the time.” – John Mulaney
- “I kind of thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny to take a swing at being on the weird side of the mainstream?’” – John Mulaney
- “You all have a relative who is an expert even though they really don’t know what they’re talking about.” – John Mulaney
- “If you’re comparing the badness of two words and you won’t even say one of them, that’s the worse word.” – John Mulaney
- “College was like a four-year game show called ‘Do My Friends Hate Me or Do I Just Need to Go to Sleep?’.” – John Mulaney
- “Now I get to say, ‘My wife,’ which is very exciting. It has a lot of power to it. It’s fun to say, ‘My wife.’” – John Mulaney
- “I never knew you were supposed to push off of your feet when you walked. And I tried it, and I walked much faster.” – John Mulaney
- “Irish people don’t want comfort. Look at a sweater made in Ireland. It’s like a turtleneck made out of Brillo pads.” – John Mulaney
- “You can do good work by simply staying up all night and eating nothing but junk food, but probably not in the long term.” – John Mulaney
- “I have tons of jokes with moments in them over the years in stand-up that don’t get a laugh but I love them so they stay.” – John Mulaney
- “I was bullied when I was in school for being Asian-American. The biggest problem with that is that I’m not Asian-American.” – John Mulaney
- “I was always the squarest person in the cool room, and alternatively, sometimes the weirder person at the mainstream table.” – John Mulaney
- “I have tons of jokes with moments in them over the years in stand-up that don’t get a laugh, but I love them, so they stay.” – John Mulaney
- “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.’” – John Mulaney
- “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.” – John Mulaney
- “I’m a very straightforward person, but that’s fine for a comedian. Because a lot of times, you’re talking about everyone else.” – John Mulaney
- “According to the Girl Scouts’ website you cannot buy Girl Scout cookies online. Do you know what you can buy online? Everything.” – John Mulaney
- “My stand-up persona is like, ‘I’ll heighten things, but I’m observing the world as it is in sort of a heightened emotional state.’” – John Mulaney
- “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.” – John Mulaney
- “I’m a very lucky person. I’m an idiot, and I’ve shoveled through life rather nicely so far, so I don’t feel like I deserve good treatment.” – John Mulaney
- “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.” – John Mulaney
- “I think eventually, everything’s gonna be okay, but I have no idea what’s gonna happen next. And neither do you. And neither do your parents.” – John Mulaney
- “I’ll book a ticket on some garbage airline. I don’t wanna name an actual airline so let’s make one up, let’s just call it like Delta Airlines.” – John Mulaney
- “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.” – John Mulaney
- “When I’m walking down the street I don’t think anybody goes, ‘Hey look at that man’, they’re just like ‘Woah, that tall child looks terrible’.” – John Mulaney
- “I do longer runs on things—a lot of stories. I really like one-liners. I like a lot of different kinds of stand-up but I’ve always been long-winded.” – John Mulaney
- “Now I live in New York and I’m psyched, but that is a stupid movie title. Lost in New York? The streets are numbered. How’d you get lost in New York?” – John Mulaney
- “For those of you who don’t know what it is, blackout drinking is when your brain goes to sleep, but your body gets all ‘Eye of the Tiger’ and soldiers on.” – John Mulaney
- “I remember one time I was in bed, and my dad came in and he said ‘Good night, John! Did you brush your teeth?’ and I said, ‘Yes’, But here’s the thing….” – John Mulaney
- “8th graders will make fun of you, but in an accurate way. They will get to the thing that you don’t like about you. They don’t even have to look at you long.” – John Mulaney
- “Having done stand-up on television and in stand-up specials like Comedy Central, you learn quickly that for that type of performance you’re playing to the camera.” – John Mulaney
- “I definitely look like a toddler. I feel comfortable and I have a lot of fun out there. And if I were to be extremely egotistical, I’d say I got a tiny bit better.” – John Mulaney
- “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.” – John Mulaney
- “I don’t look like someone who used to do anything. I look like I was just sitting in a room with a chair eating saltines for 28 years and then walked right out here.” – John Mulaney
- “The world is run by computers. The world is run by robots and we spend most of our day telling them we’re not a robot just so we can log on and look at our own stuff.” – John Mulaney
- “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.” – John Mulaney
- “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.” – John Mulaney
- “I had a lot of fun writing things that died during dress rehearsal. Sometimes, I remember the crazy ones that died even more fondly than the ones that did really well.” – John Mulaney
- “If it’s something 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.” – John Mulaney
- “I wish I could go tell the 12-year-old me, like, ‘Don’t worry that you just fainted in front of all the girls, one day you’ll be able to make this into an episode of TV.’” – John Mulaney
- “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.” – John Mulaney
- “Here’s how easy it was to get away with bank robbery back in the ’30s—as long as you weren’t still there when the police arrived, you had a 99% chance of getting away with it.” – John Mulaney
- “An episode that is near and dear to my heart is the entire cast in one room for the night because we get bed bugs in our apartment building so we have to stay with Martin Short.” – John Mulaney
- “Comfort is everything. You start doing something and you want it to be perfect right away, but most babies are born ugly and then they shake it out and you get beautiful toddlers.” – John Mulaney
- “My brothers and sisters and I had this babysitter named Veronica when we were kids, and I was in love with her. I was in love with Veronica. She would babysit us on Saturday nights.” – John Mulaney
- “It was funny to be an emcee, because you’re so at the mercy of the club. You can show up for the weekend hoping to get the $400, and get fired. I had to prank whoever they told me to prank.” – John Mulaney
- “As I got into high school and after puberty, I was a little more inward. I was a real extrovert when I was little, but I don’t know, I just got quieter. With my friends, I was still an extrovert.” – John Mulaney
- “There are a lot of great jokes you can sit down and write, but that’s just a written joke, versus the comedy of the situation. Ideally, you’re pulling as much comedy out of the situation as you can.” – John Mulaney
- “I remember writing stand-up jokes without having done sets. But as soon as I did my first set, it didn’t matter. Everything I thought would work, didn’t work. And everything I was iffy on, was funny.” – John Mulaney
- “I stopped drinking when I was 23. I kind of started when I was 13, so it was a 10-year run. But I just became a bad, annoying, drunk child, so when I stopped, I’d done a lot of things I wasn’t proud of.” – John Mulaney
- “I really set out to do this traditional looking and traditional sounding multi-cam sitcom, but then make the world as elastic as an animated show could be. Make the world as surreal as we wanted it to be.” – John Mulaney
- “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.” – John Mulaney
- “You ever seen on ‘America’s Most Wanted’ when they age a photo of someone? Just take my kindergarten photo and yellow the teeth and put bags under the eyes and be like ‘This is what he would look like now’.” – John Mulaney
- “I like to turn on the TV and watch whatever’s on. Nick Kroll does that a lot. He doesn’t watch important shows. He’ll just turn on a documentary on Mia Hamm and watch it for an hour. Whatever’s on, we watch.” – John Mulaney
- “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.” – John Mulaney
- “It’s nice when you’re nervous and everybody’s like, ‘Yeah, you should be nervous.’ Because a lot of times you’re anxious and people say, ‘Relax. Shut up.’ And that just feels like, Well, I guess I’m also crazy.” – John Mulaney
- “Going on the road for long stretches can seem daunting, and I certainly miss being home sometimes, but the chance to see so many different cities, let alone perform in them, is something I am really grateful for.” – John Mulaney
- “I used to sit around and think about what to do about quicksand! I never thought about how to handle real problems in adult life. I was never like, ‘Oh, what’s it gonna be like when relatives ask to borrow money?'” – John Mulaney
- “I’ve always believed that you often need less. You don’t need to hear why people are friends, you don’t need to hear why people are roommates, you don’t need to hear why someone would help a friend to do something.” – John Mulaney
- “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.” – John Mulaney
- “My dad came home from work and my mom told my dad that she cleaned under my bed and found a shoebox with two cigarettes and a Cosmopolitan, which prompted my dad to ask. ‘How does John know how to make a Cosmopolitan?'” – John Mulaney
- “Now I get to say, ‘my wife’ which is very exciting. It has a lot of power to it. It’s fun to say ‘my wife’. I’m looking forward to saying it a lot. ‘Get away from my wife!’ ‘No one talk to my wife!’ ‘I didn’t kill my wife!’.” – John Mulaney
- “The best-case scenario is everything goes perfect and smooth, but we’re also a new and weird show. So all my conversations were, ‘Hey, last night didn’t go perfect, but we kind of know what we’ve got in store for everybody episode-wise.’” – John Mulaney
- “It’s important to remember that life is a joke and that outlook grants a lot of perspective, but I don’t think comedy should change and become political due to other things. It should just laugh at that cosmic joke that life is all the time.” – John Mulaney
- “If I was at the Comedy Cellar at midnight, you yelled at the back of the room. But you, for television, play it to the camera because yes, you’re communicating to the people at home using the studio audience that’s right in front of you as a guide for that.” – John Mulaney
- “Sometimes, I, with comedy, it’s like someone liking you in high school. They either do, or they don’t. And when they don’t, they don’t. And that’s it. There are no appeals. You show up, and you’re like, ‘Hi! I’m-’ and you stumble, and they’re like, ‘It’s over.’” – John Mulaney
- “I always thought that quicksand was gonna be a much bigger problem than it turned out to be. You watch cartoons and quicksand is like the third biggest thing you have to worry about, behind the actual sticks of dynamite and giant anvils falling on you from the sky.” – John Mulaney
- “I’m one of the worst drivers I’ve ever seen, and I just want you all to know that if you’re ever on the highway behind me, uh, I hear you honking and I also don’t want me to be doing what I’m doing. I don’t like that I’m in that lane either, and I sure would like to get out of it!” – John Mulaney
- “I played basketball for five years and I was a benchwarmer all five years. If you were never a benchwarmer, I cannot express to you the humiliation of every Saturday morning, putting on a pair of breakaway pants and never having a reason to break them away — then they’re just pants.” – John Mulaney
- “Occasionally, you get that one person that says, ‘I really like that one part of this joke,’ and you go, ‘Oh thank you that’s my favorite part too.’ But no, in order for it to be authentic, hopefully you have jokes that everyone can just get on board with and then you have a few things for yourself.” – John Mulaney
- “I am now gross. I am damp all the time. I am damp now and I will be damp later. Like the back of a dolphin, my back. The butt part of my pants is damp a lot. I don’t think it’s anything serious, but isn’t it, though? I’ll be in a restaurant and I’ll get up and be like, ‘What did I sit in?’ And it was me.” – John Mulaney
- “I have found that people who really want to work at Saturday Night Live and pursue it get pretty close. You have to be funny, but everyone who works there, it was their dream to work there. So it’s kind of nice in that way. There’s a lot of people who say, ‘I just always wanted to do this, and now I’m doing it.’” – John Mulaney
- “I was new to acting on a stage in a narrative as opposed to acting on a stage as a stand-up. And like everything else, it’s just like comfort level. The first time I did stand-up, I was at a place called the B3 in New York on Third and Avenue B and I not only didn’t take the mic out of the stand, but I clutched the stand of the entire time.” – John Mulaney
Wrapping Up
John Mulaney is a master of comedy in so many ways. From stand-up to TV writing, he brings an infectious humor and DIY attitude that makes him one of the most beloved comedians around. The quotes above offer a glimpse inside his creative process and show just how multifaceted his comedic talents really are. Whether you’re looking for a laugh or just some inspiration, these quotes will provide plenty of both. So why not take a few moments to appreciate the genius of John Mulaney? You won’t regret it!
