New Yorkers will be rude, but at least they do so out of the rationale that everyone around them is always slowing them down. Los Angeles, I learned, is a city full of people who have the personality of the coolest pretty boy from your eighth-grade class.

Chris Gethard

Public transportation is like a magnifying glass that shows you civilization up close.

West Orange, where I grew up, is the hometown of Ian Ziering from 'Beverly Hills, 90210,' Scott Wolf from 'Party of Five,' David Cassidy from the 'Partridge Family,' and Mike Pitt of 'Boardwalk Empire' and 'Dawson's Creek.'

Chris Gethard

Home Family Art

I don't think I'm ugly per se, but on bad days, I have been told that I look like the monster from 'The Hills Have Eyes.' That was extremely confidence-shattering, so I try to take care of myself.

Chris Gethard

Car Yes Ugly

I'm a pescatarian.

Chris Gethard

T Cat Atari

I quit drinking in 2002, mere months before my college graduation.

Chris Gethard

Graduation T Quit

Northern New Jersey looks like a cluster of idyllic suburbs, but each of those seemingly normal towns has a dark side that's constantly gossiped about but never publicly acknowledged. They seem to thrive on their strangenesses.

Chris Gethard

Knowledge Us Towns

My medications make me easier to deal with. They don't interfere with my creativity or turn me into a zombie or dull my real personality. They help me connect with people, allow me to stay calm when situations seem overwhelming, and help keep my thoughts from racing out of control. They help me leave the house when I'm scared to. They help.

Chris Gethard

Car Zombie Wit

The stereotype of New Yorkers is that we're people who avoid warm human interaction, we're always in too much of a rush to enjoy simple things, and that we're just generally rude.

Chris Gethard

War Yorker York

I very classically would go into manic phases, which were as dangerous, if not more so, than the depressed phases, and I think I'd come up with the best ideas I ever had, and then the next day, I'd look at them and be like, 'This is nonsense,' because it was born out of a manic episode. What a waste of time.

Chris Gethard

Time Anger Would

I take medications every morning and night - they're my breakfast, and they're my dessert. I love them.

Chris Gethard

Morning Love Very

As far as comedy goes, I'm endlessly inspired by Jo Firestone.

Chris Gethard

Tone Ton T

Everyone likes to laugh. Everyone likes to dance along to some music.

Chris Gethard

Music Very Us

When my TV show was in production, dozens of women asked me out on Facebook. Some were shy about it; some were blatant. Some I knew, some were total strangers. But they went for it.

Chris Gethard

Women Men Anger

I've exceeded the expectations people had for me as an unconfident runt who grew up in North Jersey as well as the expectations I had for myself.

Chris Gethard

Who Well Up

I am a stereotypical northeasterner. I'm always in a rush. I've attracted stares from out-of-towners when I've shoved past someone blocking the subway door.

Chris Gethard

Easter Ways Way

I classify myself as a comedian, but I'm one of those comedians who also acts so that I can split the difference and feel insecure about both.

Chris Gethard

Who Those T

I grew up a loser, and I always felt like one, but I turned out pretty okay. I may be living proof that you can spend your whole life feeling like you're falling down a set of steps and still maybe land on your feet at the bottom.

Chris Gethard

Life Your You

I've taught people in improv classes, then watched them move to Los Angeles to become Emmy winners and movie stars. That experience, for anyone wondering, is both super exciting and also makes you put a microscope on your own life choices. It causes you to question why you still perform stand-up in so many Brooklyn basements.

Chris Gethard

Men Life Experience

'What if?' is just about the worst question I can ask myself, and I want to avoid it at all costs for the rest of my life.

Chris Gethard

Life Worst What If

I had bedbugs in 2005. I felt like a leper. Worse than a leper. At least lepers had a colony they could go and live in with other people who empathized. I instead had friends stand up from tables and walk out of restaurants when I told them I had bedbugs, because they were afraid I'd transfer the bugs to them.

Chris Gethard

Worse Wit Who

The street I lived on for the first handful of years of my life was lined with modest, lower-middle-class houses with small front yards and cracked driveways - your typical North Jersey neighborhood, with all the odd hidden darkness that that implies.

Chris Gethard

When people ask me, 'Why don't you drink?' I usually smile and say 'Because I'm not good at it.'

Chris Gethard

In late 2004, I left my much-maligned home state of New Jersey for the supposedly greener pastures of Astoria, Queens. I'd finally be in the mix, living off the subway line, able to go from audition to audition during the day and from late night show to late night show in the wee hours of the morning.

Chris Gethard

As a stand-up, as a storyteller, as an improviser, I've done thousands of shows. They allow me to work out new material that might turn into something later. They let me keep my muscles sharp for when the rent-paying gigs do come along. They keep me sane.

Chris Gethard

One thing I've realized is that being a nerd has transformed. I like that it's easier to read comic books and, like, 'Lord of the Rings' now. You don't have to get punched in the chest in the gym locker room for that anymore.

Chris Gethard

When I really have it together, I think I successfully pull off looking like the exact middle point between Macklemore and Ron Howard, only with a much bigger forehead than either of them.

Chris Gethard

I've said some things on stage where the crowd was like, 'Whoa, that's bad' - and I never say it again because that's the feedback I get.

Chris Gethard

I think what I have learned is you can't avoid losing. You're going to strike out a million times. The whole point is not to dodge losing - it's to learn how to lose well.

Chris Gethard

Thank you to anyone who's ever watched or supported 'TCGS.' Even if you checked it out once, hated it, and never checked it out again - thank you for giving us a chance.

Chris Gethard

I'm hungry in the ways that every artist is, but I also have this extra layer. I've done a lot of things that were consciously not for money, but because I'm so convinced I'm going to die in my mid-30s, I'm like, 'That's not what's important. Doing cool stuff and having that legacy is what's important.'

Chris Gethard

Getting help for my issues was one of the hardest things I've ever done, because when I get dangerously sad or manic, those feelings seek to perpetuate themselves.

Chris Gethard

No aspect of my brief and mild fame actually made me happier.

Chris Gethard

Sometimes I get gigs in weird, artsy places because weird, artsy people embraced my public-access show, which I could only have done in the way I did in New York.

Chris Gethard

New Yorkers will be rude, but at least they do so out of the rationale that everyone around them is always slowing them down. Los Angeles, I learned, is a city full of people who have the personality of the coolest pretty boy from your eighth-grade class.

Chris Gethard

I think the key to improv is always listening. It's embracing. It's positivity. It's hearing things and not shutting them down.

Chris Gethard

I think so often about how, when I was starting out at UCB, Conan O'Brien was in town, and on his show back then, they sometimes did character bits, and I started getting paid to dress up as a page or a Dutch boy on his show.

Chris Gethard

I remember the people who mentored me, and I just love being able to do that for other people.

Chris Gethard

I just really remember the feeling of being a younger comedian who was kind of an outlier for being experimental and weird and how that could feel lonely or hopeless.

Chris Gethard

I think Carmen Christopher is going to be massively huge. He's just too funny. He's got funny in his bones, and he wants to conquer every room.

Chris Gethard

Cops are everywhere in New York City. Cars drive by every few minutes. Uniforms stand nonchalantly at street corners.

Chris Gethard

Cops in New York City don't have the best reputation. It's a fast-paced city, and they deal with a lot, and many people have seen lots of cops interact with the public utilizing what can be gently called 'not the best customer service.'

Chris Gethard

Anyone who's ever been around an emergency in Manhattan realizes that there are plainclothes officers on these streets walking past us more than we ever realize.

Chris Gethard

Anyone who lives in N.Y.C. will tell you that getting into a confrontation on a city street is a complete nightmare 100 percent of the time.

Chris Gethard

I do not like confrontations in New York City.

Chris Gethard

I'm not exactly Don Draper when it comes to physical attractiveness.

Chris Gethard

If you are dating someone in New York City, and they invite you over to watch a movie, they don't really want to watch a movie.

Chris Gethard

No one in New York hangs out in their apartments.

Chris Gethard

In 2002, I was taking an improv class because, as a white male with glasses who was born between 1978 and 1994, it's legally required that I take at least one improv class in my life.

Chris Gethard

I'm a dummy from New Jersey.

Chris Gethard

I will never forget what happened on August 14, 2003. I know the exact sequence of where I was for every moment of that evening. It was a tragic day, and it's burned into my memory. Many people might remember that date, vaguely, as the date of the infamous eastern seaboard blackout that plunged all of New York City into darkness.

Chris Gethard