I've found nothing but support and generosity from older comics. I think comedians are a lot nicer than the stigma is, at least from my experience.
Bo BurnhamRead
I think it would collapse my heart if I was super famous. I don't have the nerve for it, I'm too anxious. I don't know how you're not obsessed with how people perceive you, because they're real people, you know? You can convince yourself that they don't really know you, and that's true, but how can it not hurt your feelings?
Interpretation
Fame can be emotionally overwhelming and challenging for sensitive individuals.
In this quote, Bo Burnham reflects on the emotional toll that fame can impose on a person. He highlights the anxiety that comes from being constantly evaluated by real people, feeling the weight of public perception, and how that pressure can lead to an overwhelming sense of vulnerability and fear of judgment.
In practice
This quote is perfect for a discussion on mental health and the impact of fame at a panel on celebrity culture.
I've found nothing but support and generosity from older comics. I think comedians are a lot nicer than the stigma is, at least from my experience.
There's only one rule in stand-up, which is that you have to be funny. Yet 99 per cent of comics look and talk exactly the same.
My career was exploding at the same time that social media itself was expanding. But when my online videos were taking off, I didn't think, 'Oh, great! I'm going to be able to parlay this into a career!' I just wanted to be a comedian. I just wanted to perform live.
I was definitely not the kid that just wanted to be famous for no reason whatsoever and then happened to find comedy. Fame and all that stuff have always been slightly terrifying to me, and it makes me very anxious.
I'd much rather wait till my material is up to par, in my opinion, than rush it just so I can stay in the limelight a little longer.
Life, to me, doesn't feel like a straightforward story; it doesn't make sense for me to get up there and just tell a story. Life feels like what my show feels like: chaotic and strange and disconnected.
We should commit ourselves to 'eucharistic coherence,' that is, we should be conscious that people cannot receive holy communion and at the same time act or speak against the commandments, in particular when abortions, euthanasia, and other serious crimes against life and family are facilitated. This responsibility applies particularly to legislators, governors, and health professionals.
My disciples are vegetarian not as a cult, not as a creed. They are vegetarians because their meditations make them more human, more of the heart, and they can see the whole stupidity of people killing living beings for their food. It is their sensitivity, their aesthetic awareness that makes them vegetarians.
The scales of reckoning with mortality are never evenly weighted, alas, and thus it is on the shoulders of the living that the burden of justice must continue to rest.
When [men] go to war, what they want is to impose on their enemies the victor's will and call it peace.
To make war upon rebellion is messy and slow, like eating soup with a knife.
It is important to ask ourselves, as citizens, whether a world power can provide global leadership on the basis of fear and anxiety.
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