Latest Emo Philips Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• I've always suffered from a complete inability to sense who's important.

  Emo Philips

  Important, Inability

  Source: www.wweek.com

• Interviewers always used to ask me about my pageboy haircut, and it drove me nuts: it almost made me suspect that there was something strange about it. So I cut off my pageboy.

  Emo Philips

  Cutting, Nuts, Strange

  Source: www.sheckymagazine.com

• I try not to talk during the day when I have a show that night. My voice is my instrument, just like a saxophonist's instrument is his saxophone, plus also his voice, if he's the one between tunes that makes announcements.

  Emo Philips

  Night, Voice, Trying

  Source: thecomicscomic.com

• In college I was one of six males who auditioned for five male roles in a comedy play. I was the one rejected. At that moment I made up my mind never to place myself at the mercy of some pompous, goateed, black-turtleneck-shirted "should I yay him or nay him?" pantywaist ever again.

  Emo Philips

  College, Play, Black

  Source: www.sheckymagazine.com

• Even the worst comic is at least somewhat entertaining, if only in a pathological way, for five minutes.

  Emo Philips

  Way, Comic, Minutes

  Source: www.sheckymagazine.com

• I asked the head musician if I could go onstage during the next break and he said sure. I got two laughs in twenty minutes, and walked out feeling more elated than I had ever felt in my entire life. The glory of that triumph contented me for two full years.

  Emo Philips

  Years, Two, Laughing

  Source: www.sheckymagazine.com

• I've always kind of pushed the envelope in terms of trying to get away with things no one else was going near. I always thought of myself like a mouse trying to get cheese that no one else could get without getting their tail snipped off.

  Emo Philips

  Trying, Tails, Envelopes

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I've been at stand-up 26 years now: After a while, you get as jaded as the proverbial gynecologist who no longer enjoys drugging and violating his patients.

  Emo Philips

  Years, Gynecologists, Patient

  Source: www.avclub.com

• If an asteroid is coming toward you, you don't have to blow it up. You just have to slow it down long enough for our country to rotate out of the way.

  Emo Philips

  Country, Blow, Long

  Source: www.avclub.com

• The subconscious is like having a laboratory assistant who pretends to love you and help you, but after you go home to go to sleep it goes back into the lab and starts fumbling with the data and destroying it. It's a very tricky thing. People think our minds are us, but that's not true at all. The mind is not us.

  Emo Philips

  Love You, Home, Sleep

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I think it's good to know more than the average guy. If I'm in a bar now and some pretty girl is talking to some handsome 24-year-old man, I'll say, "Okay, who's the emperor after Caligula? What chief mistake did Marcus Aurelius make in choosing a successor?" He'll just look like an idiot. She'll just gravitate toward me, I'm thinking. It works in Detroit.

  Emo Philips

  Girl, Mistake, Men

  Source: www.avclub.com

• You should get married. When I was younger, I was into the fame and fortune, and now I realize that a loving wife and happy children - that's life's greatest consolation prize.

  Emo Philips

  Children, Wife, Married

  Source: www.avclub.com

• Some comedians change their style, often to their advantage; but I see no reason why I can't continue with the "urbane sophisticate" 'til the day I die.

  Emo Philips

  Comedian, Style, Reason Why

  "Emo Philips is still... Emo". Interview with Steve Johnson, www.chicagotribune.com. September 20, 2012.

• I started doing stand-up at the age of 20. This was back in 1976, around the time (coincidence?) that the first comedy clubs were starting. The young comedians of today gasp when I tell them how many shows I did that first year: 500. Five nights a week.

  Emo Philips

  Night, Years, Comedian

  "Emo Philips is still ... Emo". Interview with Steve Johnson, www.chicagotribune.com. September 20, 2012.