“I like to wear dresses and skirts when I go onstage because the attitude that I have is, ‘I’m so excited to introduce myself to you.’ And I want to be wearing what I’d be wearing to a date or a dinner party.”
― Jenny Slate
“It makes a lot of sense to me that I would be a cartoon. I feel like a cartoon as a person. I really, really do.”
― Jenny Slate
“You don’t realize it until you go out and take a look, but there are so many ways in which sexism is just allowed in our culture, not just in the entertainment industry. It’s just allowed to be there, and that’s not acceptable anymore. And I think it’s really important to be very vocal.”
― Jenny Slate
“I had some friends that went to this hypnotist to stop smoking, and I kind of love things that seem magical. And I liked that it was in Santa Monica, and I had to go near the ocean to get my brain washed out or whatever. So I went there. And I went on a Thursday, and I got hypnotized.”
― Jenny Slate
“The experience of the human, male or female, cannot be completely defined by one startling, surprising, or gigantic life experience.”
― Jenny Slate
“Back at high school, there was this quarterback who asks me out. He’s never paid attention to me before, but now we’re on this date, going to see the ‘Sixth Sense.’ And right before the climax, he leans in – and I’m so excited, because I think we’re going to French-kiss – and then he tells me the twist. He completely ruins the movie for me.”
― Jenny Slate
“It looks like I’m just gonna keep getting really, really happy and sad and embarrassed and excited and disappointed for the rest of my life, so let’s just do that.”
― Jenny Slate
“I think my friends would say I’m pretty goal-focused but whimsical.”
― Jenny Slate
“I guess some people want to be performers because they want to be famous.”
― Jenny Slate
“I just want to be able to be creative.”
― Jenny Slate
“There’s a lot of different parts to me, so it makes total sense to me that I would do a big TV show or studio movie and then do a free comedy show the next day. They both feel equally important to me.”
― Jenny Slate
“I tend to be a bit of a workaholic, but I also can’t function without some sort of domesticity as well.”
― Jenny Slate
“I really like to cook and have dinner parties and I like to clean, it really clears my head and it makes me feel good to keep my home as a comfortable place.”
― Jenny Slate
“I think that, unfortunately, people who are maybe threatened by feminism think that it’s about setting your bra on fire and being aggressive, and I think that’s really wrong and really dangerous.”
― Jenny Slate
“I want to write a studio movie, but probably one that’s for me to be in.”
― Jenny Slate
“That was something that I learned: It’s actually okay if the way that I do my best is when I’m treated well.”
― Jenny Slate
“I didn’t hit puberty until I was, like, 17, so I love to talk about that.”
― Jenny Slate
“I think of my gender as a part of my complex humanity.”
― Jenny Slate
“I like dressing like I’m going on a date when I’m on stage.”
― Jenny Slate
“There is something to grace and deportment, but you determine that for yourself. That’s something you own.”
― Jenny Slate
“I got great sex education, and I always knew that if I wanted to be sexually active, I had to have safe sex.”
― Jenny Slate
“A lot of people think that I’m one of the women from ‘Broad City’ – and I’m just not.”
― Jenny Slate
“I was a teenager in ’95, so I didn’t dress like a woman then. I was really small. I remember wishing I wasn’t wearing Gap Kids.”
― Jenny Slate
“Using creative expression as a means to a professional end makes me curl up a bit.”
― Jenny Slate
“Women love to be asked more about their clothes than their work. We’re dolls; we made a wish to become alive.”
― Jenny Slate
“I like any film where the female characters are complex and have a functioning imperfection.”
― Jenny Slate
“I waited my whole life to be a woman, so now my clothes are fairly tight.”
― Jenny Slate
“I have things I say over and over again, for sure, but I’ve never wanted to make an album or really go on the road. I don’t want any traction. I just want to be able to express myself and to feel love.”
― Jenny Slate
“I think, from a really early age, I just wanted to be an actress. And I ended up doing comedy because it was the thing that kind of, like, came out of my nature the most easily. But, I’ve always wanted to do as many different kinds of performances – whatever I could.”
― Jenny Slate
“It’s not good for me to see things while they’re being edited. I can be highly critical, so I try to stay away.”
― Jenny Slate
“I’m usually a fairly harsh critic. It depends. I tend to really not watch my work, because I just feel uncomfortable, and I can be highly critical.”
― Jenny Slate
“It was so quick for me on ‘SNL.’ It’s not something I consider to be, like, one of the big spaces in my career.”
― Jenny Slate
“I always thought that farts were funny, and I always thought that they were mine to talk about because they came out of my body.”
― Jenny Slate
“I think I was aware when I started doing stand-up, especially on my own, that, yeah, I’m getting up on stage, and I’m a woman, and I dress in a sort of typically feminine fashion.”
― Jenny Slate
“’Obvious Child,’ the short, had a nice life online and a great festival run, but the short and the feature still stand apart from everything else I’ve done. I play a woman who you might meet in life. My other work is much more heightened.”
― Jenny Slate
“I sometimes think my earnestness is confused for stupidity, but it shouldn’t be.”
― Jenny Slate
“It’s exciting to play someone who is a bit tougher than I am. I liked feeling those adjustments.”
― Jenny Slate
“There’s not one type of stand-up, just like there’s not one type of woman.”
― Jenny Slate
“Don’t think twice. If it’s a character that you feel compelled to play and story that you feel needs to be told, don’t think twice.”
― Jenny Slate
“I would go so far as to say I would not have the life that I have right now if it wasn’t for Gabe Liedman. He is the first person I met in my adulthood that I felt was truly delighted by me and understood me and also was curious about me.”
― Jenny Slate
“I don’t have any horror stories of trying to start as a comedian and eating it constantly on stage.”
― Jenny Slate
“It’s strange: I’ve done so many things up until I did ‘Obvious Child,’ including writing children’s books and making ‘Marcel the Shell.’ To me, the through-line is incredibly clear: it all comes from wanting to be connected to my own inner voice and not wanting to be on somebody else’s agenda if that means that I can’t be myself.”
― Jenny Slate
“My baseline function is I’m usually really happy and optimistic. I think I really genuinely like being alive, and I’ve got a spring in my step – that’s what I’ve been like all my life.”
― Jenny Slate
“For some reason, I never watched Lifetime but just discovered it. I was like, ‘Oh, it’s all rom-coms!’”
― Jenny Slate
“That time when you’re waiting for a job can be the most impactful and important time because you develop your preferences as a person. Knowing what you like will make you more confident. And then you’ll stand out.”
― Jenny Slate
“You are not waiting for your life to start. It’s going on right now.”
― Jenny Slate
“I feel I have to be totally cemented in my position, all: ‘You can’t tell me what to do with my body’, but there is another part of me that is, you know, myself: vulnerable, with lots of doubts.”
― Jenny Slate
“People want to see comedies where characters aren’t sacrificed for the jokes.”
― Jenny Slate
“I couldn’t wait to be an adult woman, and I’m glad I felt that way as a kid because, when I grew up, I realised I live in a world where the female form is really disrespected, and society is often trying to wrestle the female form into a shape that looks more like a young boy.”
― Jenny Slate
“I think sometimes in comedy the characters are often sacrificed for the joke, and it’s more important for it to be funny than for there to be love.”
― Jenny Slate
“Comedy can be a little brutal, but not in a satisfying way.”
― Jenny Slate
“I tend to be really spacey, but I don’t think it’s because I’m unintelligent – it’s just my imagination and a little bit of ADD.”
― Jenny Slate
“I don’t know exactly what’s next. But I do know now that it’s something rather than nothing.”
― Jenny Slate
“I fidget and change my outfit a lot. It’s really a way of keeping myself comfortable.”
― Jenny Slate
“I have a big thing about needing to know that I belong – in my group of friends, in my family, in my industry.”
― Jenny Slate
“I always loved to sing and was very, very loud. I wanted to be a movie star, like Judy Garland.”
― Jenny Slate
“I wanted to be in New York because I wanted to be on ‘SNL.’ I spent a lot of time wanting to be on ‘Saturday Night Live’ as a kid. That’s what I wanted.”
― Jenny Slate
“It’s 2014, and the fact that anybody has to fight for the right to do what they want to do with their body in a safe and responsible way is infuriating.”
― Jenny Slate
“I grew up idolizing Madeline Kahn and Lily Tomlin and Carol Burnett, Ruth Gordon, Rosalind Russell, Amy Irving, women who were stylish and real actresses who did real work and could not be replaced with anyone else. You cannot cast anyone else in Madeline Kahn’s roles.”
― Jenny Slate
“It’s important to say women are complex.”
― Jenny Slate
“It’s important to say that it’s not just men that can be man-children. Women can be grown-up women and still have the playfulness of people who are younger.”
― Jenny Slate
“If I’m not the best aunt in America, then I don’t know what’s going on.”
― Jenny Slate
“People say that the best part about doing animation is that you don’t have to dress up to go to work, but I don’t believe that. I dress up to go to work. I dress up for an airplane. I think it’s just focusing your skillset, focusing on your voice and the comedy.”
― Jenny Slate
“’Saturday Night Live’ will always be this amazing, powerful behemoth, but it’s also not the only thing happening in comedy anymore.”
― Jenny Slate
“I know sometimes my Twitter feed is intense, but I take it as a friendly void to scream into. I don’t have another way to be.”
― Jenny Slate
“I’m tired of someone being called ‘quirky’ because they tripped or got a stain on their shirt. It’s like a beautiful blonde lady who’s quirky because she has bedhead, or she’s quirky because she sometimes says the wrong, cute thing. I like it when women are quirky as human beings.”
― Jenny Slate
“I’ve always wanted to play a normal woman, and I think I have been offered these parts where I play a kook because I’m not the idea of what a normal woman is.”
― Jenny Slate
“I spend so much time hoping things for myself.”
― Jenny Slate
“I hope that the restaurant I go to will have buffalo chicken fingers. I hope that one day I can work with Matt Damon. I have big and little dreams, and they’re all equally important to me. A life without buffalo chicken fingers, I don’t know if I would want that life. Even if it meant I got to work with Matt Damon. Everything has its worth.”
― Jenny Slate
“I don’t always feel comfortable being outwardly aggressive.”
― Jenny Slate
“You don’t have to be in the brightest, shiniest state of being an individual to feel like you’re exceptional.”
― Jenny Slate
“A woman who is not ready to have a baby making it work is not a happy ending to me. It’s a personal nightmare.”
― Jenny Slate
“It takes a while to realize that just because you’re a stand-up comedian and you do comedy, you’re not going to be good at all comedy.”
― Jenny Slate
“I tend to watch things that aren’t really the genre of my own work.”
― Jenny Slate
“There’s so much interference, so much static and people’s voices talking about what you do and why you do it that I’ve learned to be like, ‘No, no.’ It’s actually simple. I just do this.”
― Jenny Slate
“I learned my lesson early in my career that it’s not helpful to go and look at what other people’s opinions are.”
― Jenny Slate
“You’re always putting yourself into your work. There’s no separation; it’s just how you use yourself and transform.”
― Jenny Slate
“Usually what is difficult for me are things that make me feel scared. That’s when difficulties rather than challenges arise.”
― Jenny Slate
“We love rom-coms, but it’s getting to where we don’t identify with any of the women in them.”
― Jenny Slate
“I think it’s important to not just speak to like-minded people.”
― Jenny Slate
“I never noticed my voice. I did become aware as a little kid at camp that I liked doing accents. We’d do plays and skits, and I realized I loved speaking in voices that weren’t my own.”
― Jenny Slate
“I loved pretending to be a middle-aged Jewish woman. I just wanted to do what I saw Gilda Radner and Carol Burnett doing. But I’m not a particularly good impressionist. It was never my strong suit.”
― Jenny Slate
“When I was growing up, I was so fascinated by Mel Blanc and all of the different voices that he did for ‘Looney Tunes’ and watching Robin Williams record voice-over for the genie in ‘Aladdin.’ It always seemed to be a major honor – something you have to earn. Like people trust you when they want to have you there without seeing you.”
― Jenny Slate
“I love waking up in the morning. It makes me feel really excited.”
― Jenny Slate
“If I’m going to have baked goods in the morning, the rule is that I have to make them myself.”
― Jenny Slate
“I think, in general, finding the right time to have a baby is pretty scary.”
― Jenny Slate
“I do think that character types trend. As a female comedian, the parts that come my way are often terrible women.”
― Jenny Slate
“Don’t use a pick-up line.”
― Jenny Slate
“I really like working. I can’t think of a job I didn’t like. I was in an Alvin and the Chipmunks movie, which is not my idea of folk art; but I really enjoyed making it, and everyone was really nice.”
― Jenny Slate
“I feel nervous when the script is set in stone, and I feel nervous when I feel the script is written for mass consumption because I don’t see myself that way.”
― Jenny Slate
“I feel a lot of life in me and a lot of creative energy, and I think it’s better suited somewhere it can run free.”
― Jenny Slate
“I’ve become very interested in the ways things can change even with someone you’ve known for many years and you’ve committed to for life. How drastic can you damage things in the way you speak to someone?”
― Jenny Slate
“There’s a whole thing now in the entertainment industry that’s like, ‘You need to write for yourself. Those are the people that are really valuable.’ And it’s just like, ‘I don’t want to! I just want to act!’”
― Jenny Slate
“I just really like it when things are earnest.”
― Jenny Slate
“My grandfather was a lot like a white Jewish George Jefferson, and he did not enjoy my work very much.”
― Jenny Slate
“I always wanted to be a children’s author, and I have a really big library of children’s books. All the ones from when I was little, they are just so beautiful. I read kids’ books, and they calm me down.”
― Jenny Slate
“I think that there have been a lot of fear-based assertions that feminism is about aggression, and that is incorrect and untrue. Feminism is about equality; that’s what it’s about.”
― Jenny Slate
“I’ve called myself an accidental activist because I came to it not on purpose.”
― Jenny Slate
“I don’t like taking physical risks at all. I take a lot of emotional risks, and I don’t feel like I need to get on a bike or a horse or jump off of anything ever.”
― Jenny Slate
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