Success is not the absence of failure; it's the persistence through failure.
Aisha Tyler
You can't control where you were born, the family you were born into, what you look like; you can't control any of those circumstances. The only thing you can control is how you react.
My hands are delicate and elegant, thank you very much. They're well-kept; my nails are clean.
I'm black, and black don't crack. It does droop.
I'm, like, a binge gamer.
I was like, 'I want us to stop using that term. I'm not a 'girl gamer.' I'm just a gamer.' The reasons I love gaming are the same reasons everyone loves gaming.
Not only was I the only black kid and the only poor kid, but my parents were transcendental meditation devotees, and I live in an ashram for a good portion of my childhood.
I can't control what's fair and unfair. I can't control the nature of the business or the nature of society or the nature of the world, but what I can control is how I choose to see the world and what I choose to put back into it.
I think, like most gamers, I talk a good game.
I remember leaving the first 'Matrix' movie feeling completely radicalized, completely changed. I think we all, from our ordinary lives, like to think about putting ourselves into these extraordinary situations and wonder how we'd respond.
People challenge my nerd cred all the time. I just show them the photo of me winning my middle-school science fair, wearing my Casio calculator watch and eyeglasses so big they look like they can see the future.
I tell jokes, chat with people, and make stuff.
After 40, your chances of getting pregnant are between two and eight percent, and in my particular case, they were less than five percent.
For the record, I'm a clinical workaholic.
I went to private school for two years, then Aptos Middle School, and I finished at McAteer. Several of my classmates at those schools are my friends today.
The only way I was going to be funny was if I was myself, and either you liked it, or you didn't. Either you got on my train, or you didn't. Freeing myself of this idea that I had to fit a certain mold was when I was able to be my funniest.
If you look at shows like 'Def Comedy Jam' in its heyday, there were so many really funny, talented black comics that never would have gotten on that show because they just weren't doing comedy that fit that mold.
Pursuit of perfection is futile. Instead, I prioritize and often realize goals or tasks I've been aiming for just aren't that important.
I am black, and there's no getting around that, but being black doesn't define every aspect of my life.
Comedy is ugly. It's honest, it's raw.
I think people assume that because I talk the way that I talk that I grew up with money, and then I've had to say, 'No, I grew up poor.' And then I was like, 'Why do I have to play this game where the only black experience that's authentic is the one where you grew up in poverty?' I mean, it's ridiculous.
I've been blessed to have insanely hip parents who think of me as their little Chris Rock.
Marriage is a blood sport. Marriage is jousting. It's disembowelment. It's just terrible, terrible visceral injuries. It's not for everybody.
When I get old and slow down I want to look behind me and see all the fire and the wreckage and no stone left unturned.
I'm just myself, so I don't know that I think of myself as a nerd icon.
If you have a secret, and it's embarrassing to you, when you tell that story - you own it. It becomes yours, and no one can use it against you.
The City gets more and more beautiful every time I come home.
It's a thrill to star with such great actors like Kevin Bacon, Kelly Preston, and Garrett Hedlund.
Chris Parnell's a genius, so he'd be amazing on 'Who's Line.'
I've said this before, and I'm sure there are people who disagree, but I feel like one of the reasons there aren't a lot more women in stand-up - and there are many more now; it's not parity, but it's getting there - is that women are not socialized to look stupid or silly. They're socialized to be pretty and precious.
I didn't mind being in a school with a small African-American population. The African-American-community was very tight, and that was great. But I also wanted to interact with other types of folks.
I'm surrounded by geniuses, which is really not good for my own personal self-esteem!
I married my college boyfriend, so I've been with him since I was a kid.
I have this insane and unabated longing for San Francisco. I come up there every chance that I get.
I really only play shooters, which is a nice way to restrict the amount of gameplay in the house.
The more people who come forward and talk about how much they love gaming, how much they talk about individuality and diversity, the more gamers of color that come out and gay gamers that come out and everybody talking about what they love - that's what the community has in common: a love of gaming.
I love Toronto. I love it. I love Toronto. I love Canada. I can't wait to get back. Can't wait to have some Timbits.
I'm sure you can imagine it's pretty frustrating to have people talking about your private life who don't know anything about it.
I think people sleepwalk through their lives, and for me, I wanted to embrace everything. And that meant the agonizing pain and the transcendence, and you can't have one without the other.
And I was the only black kid in my school for almost all of my childhood, until I was a teenager. So imagine, if you will, being 6 feet tall by third grade, so essentially being a living maypole.
There's a part of every person that is entertained by the idealistic, the fantastic.
On general principle, I boycott shows that don't employ actors.
I was with someone at 19, and I was married at 23, and I didn't want kids when I was in my 20s.
I'm a think gamer with twitch tendencies.
I thought I was gonna be an attorney, so I went to Dartmouth and I was a government major and I minored in environmental policy, and I didn't do anything academically around the arts.
I started out being a stand up and writing my own material. That took me to 'Talk Soup,' where I was writing and performing for TV.
Pop culture is great, but it can be bad, at times.
Dartmouth is a small school with high-caliber teaching. Our classes were all taught by professors, not teaching assistants. I felt like that was a school where I could make a big splash. The opportunities would be grander and more robust for me there than at a school with 40,000 students.
But I love stand-up, and it's where I came from creatively, so it's something I never want to walk away from.
I am constantly re-evaluating my goals and trying to strike items from my to-do list that aren't critical.
