Al Madrigal

I once called a guy into his own office and spun around in his own chair to greet him. That kind of thing may be why I quit, before I got into serious trouble. I would smile and the person would get so upset. But you do a thousand of those things, and it makes you weird.

I'm not much for setup... punch line. I talk about my kids. I talk about my wife.

I don't really move onstage; all I do is just gradually hunch more and more and jut out at the people in the front row.

I'm so sick of people treating Latinos like some homogenous group that all feel the same way about everything.

I love doing a show that makes no mention of ethnicity.

I think any husband knows when to stand down when it comes to domestic disputes. After 13 years of marriage, I even think I may have it figured out.

I was a corporate hatchet man, and it's impossible for me to turn that off. It's this curse when I walk into businesses: 'That needs to be fixed, that needs to be fixed.'

I'm delighted to carry on in the tradition of the great reporters like Edward R. Murrow, Ernie Pyle, and Geraldo Rivera to probe vitally important issues of the day, starting with whether I'm Hispanic or Latino.

People see me on the 'Daily Show' or 'About a Boy'. But the reality is that I only got into this business to do standup comedy.

You re-watch 'Napoleon Dynamite', and there's a lot of thrift shopping that goes on in that movie; there's a lot of funny stuff. It's definitely amusing, and paying 99 cents for a samurai sword is amazing.

I've always liked and appreciated storytellers like Garry Shandling and Bill Cosby - more long-form comedy. So starting in San Francisco, watching all these great comics - Patton Oswalt, Dave Chappelle - you get to see them a bunch, and you go, 'Wow, this is where I need to be.'

I was well-dressed and good at firing people because I really did care. I cared about giving them the opportunity to talk through the situation and was always sincere. I would explain that 'This was a bad match,' and they were probably meant to do other things if they weren't giving their all to this, which paid $10 a hour.