At twenty-three, Oprah was fired from her first reporting job. This is the beginning and the end of the things you have in common with Oprah.

Dance like no one’s watching. No one is watching. Your YouTube channel has zero subscribers.

The most important things in life aren’t things. They’re the feelings you get when you can afford to buy things.

In improv, as in life, the answer is always “Yes, and,” especially if the question is “Are all of your friends looking for reasons they can’t come to your improv show?”

Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, who cares? You were just daylighting as a moon hunter to pay the bills until your script gets optioned.

Never, never, never, never, never, never, never give up your parents’ health coverage.

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed,” which is exactly what happens five to eight days out of the month.

You miss a hundred per cent of the shots you don’t take. And, if you’re anything like Wayne Gretzky’s loser son, you also miss a hundred per cent of the shots you do take.

Some people see things as they are and say, “Why?” At night, you dream things that never were and think, This is the breakthrough idea I’ve been waiting for! But when you wake up in the morning you find, written in your Notes app, something incomprehensible, like “Keanu Reeves decides puppy murder.”

“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is a line from a song by Kelly Clarkson, who—judge her all you want—has achieved more commercial and artistic success than you could ever imagine.

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent, but you just spent your afternoon trying to turn that saying into a B.D.S.M. joke for your eighty-seven Twitter followers, so . . . I don’t know, man.

No person on her deathbed ever regrets having spent too much time at work. What she might regret is having spent two years of her life making a video short called “Drunk Dave Goes to the Car Wash.”

There’s no “I” in “team.” But there is an “I” in the question “Is anyone going to come to my one-woman show entitled ‘Pearls Before Wine’?” And the answer is no.

At twenty-eight, J. K. Rowling was a single mother living on welfare. You stopped reading the “Harry Potter” books when they got too long. Also, married or single, you would be a terrible parent.

Remember that just when the caterpillar thought the world was over she became a beautiful butterfly. Which is to say, we can’t pay you at this time, but, in a way, doesn’t the exposure more than make up for it? ♦