Colin Jost Quotes
Screenwriter, Actor
Almost all the golf courses in Staten Island double as something else.
When you're around people who are trying to be funny all day and trying to one-up each other, that's just naturally - if you want to do it - it's going to make you better.
When I was 10, I went to the Junior Olympics for the 50-meter and 100-meter breaststroke.
I was at Harvard when Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook, and I begged him not to do it.
Learning to be your natural self in front of five cameras and a silent studio takes time. Trying to be funny under duress is probably a lot like trying to play golf relaxed under pressure.
Whatever I did, I always gravitated toward trying to be funny. If I was with friends, we were joking around. If I wrote for the newspaper, it would be a humor column. If I acted, I wanted to do comedy.
I didn't understand when somebody thanked me for writing a good sketch, because it was something I wanted to do, but now I totally get it, because when someone writes something great for me, I'm so appreciative.
Initially, I think I was eager to get off Staten Island and go away for school, that kind of thing. Then what you do maybe 10 years after that, you start maybe appreciating all the great things about the place you grew up. You can go back and enjoy it because you don't have that angst or sense of struggle to get away anymore.
I chose to buy a house in Montauk because it has a sleepier vibe than the rest of the East End. I also felt that I would run into city people in East Hampton and wanted more of a buffer.
I always tell people, when they ask me what to do to be a writer or to be a performer, the key is to go to a place where there are a lot of other people who are trying to do the same thing as you and taking it very seriously.
The first joke I ever told on stage was a golf joke.
When I started at 'SNL,' I was lucky to start early. So now starting on 'Update,' I am the age when most people are when they start doing that. It feels like a different world and capacity, like starting over in another challenge. A heightened challenge.
Before I went to a meeting at the 'Harvard Lampoon,' I had no idea that there was even a comedy magazine at Harvard, let alone that you could write comedy potentially for a living.
I honestly think that Donald Trump's only adviser is his doorman.
I'm a 12-handicap.
I've played at the Comedy Studio. I never did as an undergrad, but I have in recent years, whenever I've gone back to anything at Harvard, I've tried to go there and do some sets.
I majored in the history and literature of Russia and Britain. It has not helped my career.
I commuted an hour and a half each way to high school in N.Y.C. I took a bus, a ferry, then a subway.
I'm really excited about Jordan Spieth. Like a great in any sport, when the moment is the biggest, he performs his best.
I never thought about 'being' in comedy when I grew up, because I didn't know it was a real job. But looking back, it's the only thing I ever really cared about.
Montauk is a little more raw and rugged than the other parts of the Hamptons, and I like that.
I never came out to the Hamptons when I was younger - it was always a fancy and exotic place.
When you're pitching movies, sometimes you know what the idea is, but you fully don't know the dimensions of it.
Staten Island is segregated, but it's also - I don't know. It's, like, it's not - it's not unprogressive.
Having Twitter on your phone is like being with a journalist that hates you 24 hours a day. Anything you say on that can be spun. Truly, that's what you have to think of it as.
I love buffalo wings and eat them at least three times a week.
I did go to college with him, but everyone's always like, 'Did you meet Mark Zuckerberg? Did you hang out with him?' and I'm like, 'No,' because he was in a lab creating Facebook, and I was, like, learning about alcohol. Well, we did go to school, and I think I'm not really benefiting from that relationship in any way.
My mom was the breadwinner in my family. I always thought, 'That's how it is.' I never thought that was the exception.
When you contribute to food banks or give money that goes to having meals delivered, you're meeting the most basic need. It's such a direct way to help.
It's not an easy job to think creatively and then also have to think logistically.
It doesn't get better than making people laugh and also making sure people don't go hungry.