Jim Norton Quotes

Lenny Bruce did clean TV. You have to be able to do that, I think, to succeed because if you want to promote something, you go on ‘The Tonight Show’ or ‘Letterman’ or whatever, you can’t be dirty.

For me, a good comedy town is filled with people on the verge of a riot. They need something to relieve the tension.

I unloaded trucks for a living and I hated it.

Everyone has a reason why their particular sacred cow is the sacred cow to be honored.

If the show is going really well and the comedian is still annoyed with the audience, chances are he’s a Boston comic. That’s the beauty of Boston comics.

Obviously I’m 100-percent for freedom of expression.

No matter how many books I’ve sold, nothing can correct the fact I look like Alfred Hitchcock from the side.

Here’s the rule of thumb: When the entire family looks like the unibomber, they’re against gay marriage.

I love everything about Boston. The women are phenomenal, they’re all dirty. It’s just a really great place to do comedy.

I don’t worry about the crowds agreeing with me anymore. I want them to laugh and have a good time, but I think they can disagree with you and still enjoy it.

I once had a therapist fall asleep on me. That really wrecks your self-esteem.

To me the important thing for a comic to be is emotionally honest.

The more disgruntled the white people are, the happier they are to see me, that has to be it. I do really well in Boston, I do really well in Cleveland, I do really well in Philly, Jersey, certain parts of Florida. Places where there are really really aggressive white people tend to love me.

I have cowlicks, so my hair has always been a source of torture for me.

I get away with 10 times more on ‘Leno’ than I would on any other show.

Wherever I go, there is definitely my audience. I would say in some places there’s more of them than others, but it’s one advantage to performing for a long time and building up kind of a reputation with a certain crowd.

I love Philly so much. I know that at any time, any place, a fight can break out. Those are great comedy fans.

I’d like to get my own TV show on, whether it’s a talk show or a comedy, that I write.

I don’t care if I offend people. I really don’t care.

I don’t have jokes that I can’t defend.

Every comic says things that are going to offend someone, so we all have to defend each other with this stuff.

You know, Americans think that they’re such progessive and free thinkers, but we’re as uptight as any other country when it comes to speech and language and content.

I don’t watch too much television because I want to write something, and you never want to be influenced by other things that are on – and if they’re really funny it’ll just depress me because it’s something I’m not a part of.

I got a GED when I was 21 and it doesn’t mean anything to me now. I’m still a high school dropout and I like the fact that I’ve had a good life without that.

I’m a much nicer guy than people think I’m going to be.

I’m very careful with my money.

You just have to believe in what you’re saying and be able to explain why you said it. There’s nothing I say that I can’t back up or at least explain why I came to that conclusion, so I’m not afraid of getting in trouble.

I’m afraid if I start to enjoy life, the rug will be yanked out from beneath me.

If I’m gonna make fun of Trump, I’m gonna tell you things that I’ve done that are similar. I like to tell on myself, as well as make fun of the people I’m talking about. I feel like it gives me more of a right to make fun of them if I am talking about myself, too. It’s more fun for me that way, honestly.

With ‘Mouthful of Shame,’ all of my fans or the majority of them said it’s the best thing you’ve ever done and that meant a lot because as you go on with time, if they’re still really enjoying it, that means you’re getting better.

Being a harsh, dirty comic, the last person on earth I ever expected to help my career was Jay Leno. I had always thought of performing on ‘The Tonight Show’ as an unachievable goal, because I bought into the myth that only squeaky clean, family-friendly material would be welcome there.

It’s really hard to truly want people who you hate to have the right to say whatever they want. And we all disguise the ugly self-centeredness of it.

I hate my hair so much.

I have exposed so much of my own real life. Like I feel like I always try to be honest and I always try to talk about where I am at and what I want.

Google is not my friend. I’ve been way too open in my career. Google has killed any shot I have on the dating apps.

I am a really bad boyfriend.

My instinct is to be honest and make fun of things.

Language in comedy is very violent.

I don’t really like Phil Robertson and I think his opinion about gay marriage is stupid. But in a country where we want an honest conversation, we have to realize that part of the honest conversation is hearing things we don’t like and discussing them.

I want people to feel like there’s nothing they have to be worried about laughing at. There’s nothing that can’t be made fun of.

People say that Americans trends are transient, but the one activity we never seem to tire of is being outraged. Boy, do we love it!

The media is a very necessary thing in our country to keep people honest.

I hate a well-lit room.

I like to keep busy, because otherwise I’d be languishing by myself.

I find when most people are offended, it’s phony. It’s an attention-seeking device. So I love to call them out on it from stage.

I’ve done ‘Letterman’ twice and he was friendly, he said hello as he was shaking your hand and in front of the audience, but you never spoke to him before or after.

I figure I do a lot of things, none of them particularly well.

A lot of times the mainstream public loves something, critics will hate it and then they’ll think the public is stupid and they’re above the public.

Regular people are the problem. It’s not the government, it’s not the invasive Big Brother, it’s the fact that we’re a nation of snitches and nosey people who then cry when somebody wants our personal information. I’m talking about people who are being voyeuristic to people’s privacy.

Americans have always been inconsistent and kind of fake with outrage, but we’ve just slipped totally upside-down.

I am a degenerate, and I know that.

I choose to believe that we are addicted to the rush of being offended, the idea of it, rather than believing we have become a nation of emasculated children whose only defense against an abyss of emotional agony is a trigger warning.

Ozzy Osbourne is one of my favorite interviews, he’s so good.

Realize that doing comedy is only going to make your depression worse.

I got really lucky that at age 12, I knew I just wanted to be a dancing monkey in front of people and entertain them, or try to. It’s amazing that at age 12 I realized what a needy life I was gonna have.