Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Before Twitter, if comedians wrote what they had for lunch on a Post-it and put it through your letterbox you wouldn't find it acceptable - but now apparently it is on Twitter.
It's 103 comedians, or however many it is, and how would everyone tell it. It's enough people of substance that it makes you think of the people who aren't there that are alive.
It's still amazing to me to walk down the halls of 'SNL.' You see pictures of the greatest comedians we grew up worshiping, basically. It's crazy to be able to still work there.
Tons of comedians have said, 'I grew up learning from Bill Cosby. He's great.' But that respect doesn't mean much to the young people. They like their ginger ale with hot sauce.
If writers, like comedians or singers, could only hear themselves bombing as they worked, it's likely that certain books would be cut short after the first few leaden sentences.
I used to dread going on 'Politically Incorrect' with 'up and coming' comedians. But at least on 'Politically Incorrect', there would be just one has-been or wannabe on the panel.
Christians have always been fodder for comedians who have tended to portray them as anoraks - slightly clammy, beatifically smiley dullards with barely a personality between them.
It's quite telling that the really big comedians - like John Bishop from Liverpool, Kevin Bridges from Glasgow, Peter Kay from Bolton - stand out with their strong regional accents.
I'd been to the Comedy Store, and I loved the terror of it and the way the best comedians could control the crowd. What confidence that would give you, if you could somehow survive.
There's a fallacy with stand up comedy, which is, people come up to comedians, and they go, 'You say what I think but I'm not brave enough to say,' and that's not particularly true.
I don't know about other comedians, but I know that I never have felt anything like stage fright. I've felt nervous before big shows, but I think that's different than stage fright.
But it's fun to be something, have that, and you don't have to be real. It's like, comedians. They go on and they're doing all these jokes. I would be like that if I were more awake.
The biggest threat to any politician is an artist. Comedians unleashed can do a great deal of damage. David Letterman can do more damage than any Republican assault by Newt Gingrich.
Comedians like to see people smile. With acting, I love giving people a feeling, an emotion. I like to give people a feeling. When they come away from my scene, I want them to think.
I've always wanted to make people laugh. It's been my only ambition, ever since my dad introduced me to the genius of the great comedians: Tony Hancock, Woody Allen, people like that.
As far as stand-ups go, I always loved Richard Pryor, Chris Rock, and Sinbad. Basically, I love black comedians because they're the funniest. I wish I were a black comedian, actually.
I wanted to do - there was this film called 'Magic' that Anthony Hopkins did. And the director wanted me. The writer wanted me. Joe Levine said no, I don't want any comedians in this.
You work with stand-up comedians or you work with somebody in theater, you work with somebody from 'Star Search' or 'Survivor' or a kid, it constantly changes how you play with people.
Mimicry artistes and comedians are supposed to incorporate incidents around him in his acts in a satirical way. For that, he should be well aware about the things happening around him.
Before doing my first open mic, I was sitting in the back watching all these comedians banter back and forth and fire jokes and up each other, and I thought, 'This is where I wanna be.'
Comedians who are 22 years old can certainly be funny and clever, and be capable of telling jokes - but are they talking about their favorite TV shows, or a particular brand of shampoo?
It's our hope that MySpace Comedy, much like Music and Film before it, will serve as a launch pad for up-and-coming comedians and as an attraction for the biggest names in the industry.
Where are the exhortations for children to reject the self-defeating stereotypes that reduce black people to violent, oversexed 'gangstas,' minstrel show comedians and mindless athletes?
Humor was a big part of my childhood. My family was full of comedians. We'd sit around the dinner table and try to one-up each other. It sometimes ended in tears, but usually in laughter.
The logic was, there weren't too many female comedians, so I thought I might as well try a field that had fewer competitors than the field I was in, which was acting, singing and dancing.
I've met so many older actors and comedians who've told me they wished they'd spent as much time with their kids as they did chasing the money. You've got to draw a line but it's a gamble.
A bunch of comedians have gotten in 'trouble' for sharing their views. When an actor or an artist or might come out saying something political or whatever, then it becomes about that view.
All the people I looked up to - Roseanne, Tim Allen, and Jerry Seinfeld - were stand-up comedians who used humor to get TV shows. I'm on TV now, and I'm working towards getting my own show.
I'd say any good set or any comedy that I've worked on, that's worked, has been comedians pitching ideas back and forth to each other. A lot of like, 'What if you say this? What about this?'
I love Dallas, Austin and Houston. Why? Because some of the best comedians, like Bill Hicks and Sam Kinison, started their careers in Texas, and because the crowds there are comedy-educated.
I love coming to New York. I think I'm going to come really often here. I need to - for the show, for the comedy. I want to do the shows here and have a beer and hang out with the comedians.
There are talented people along the way, although very few come to mind. They're not very daring. Part of the problem is that comedians don't want to overthrow anything. They want to join it.
Obviously those who burn to be professional jesters mean that they want to be successful comedians. And those are always an elite, microscopic portion of the population. But oh, how they try.
With a lot of comedians, one of their major attributes is that they look comedic, with a certain hangdog or manic expression. I look like the neighborhood bully. That doesn't elicit laughter.
People, I think, are more interested in being offended than getting to the heart of a situation. And to go after comedians to me is so counterproductive, because comedy is kind of a medicine.
I'm so absolutely pro-Denver. I wrote a fake hip-hop song about Denver. I've been claiming Denver. Part of the joke of the song is nobody was really claiming Denver - no rappers, no comedians.
I remember 9/11; we had 'Comics Come Home' about a month after those events. That night, even the comedians were concerned. Would the audience be ready to laugh? It was a release for everyone.
Everyone forgets comedians are actors. There's no question about it. A Robin Williams cannot say the same line every night for 40 weeks and make it sound fresh unless he's doing an acting job.
Honestly, it's hard to learn about comedy from comedians. Comedy is not something that you necessarily learn or can imitate. You're funny or you're not, and you hope what you're doing is funny.
From the point of view of being in the public radar, comedians have less problems than other actors. Action movie stars like Stallone or Schwarzenegger usually attract the more aggressive fans.
Manchester was a fantastic place to go out in. There were 10 clubs with world-class cabaret and comedians. You'd go in and Tom Jones might be singing, or Shirley Bassey or Engelbert Humperdinck.
My mom is two people to me. She's my mom number one, and then she's this lady most comedians know as being a legendary owner of a nightclub that's responsible for starting a lot of heavy careers.
Most young comedians would be lying to say that they weren't huge Weird Al fans when they were kids. Weird Al is probably the first person I ever realized had a career that was just making jokes.
When they meet a stand-up comic, people sometimes remark: 'That must be the hardest job in the world.' Among comedians, only Freddie Starr is not embarrassed and slightly appalled by this remark.
When it comes to black female comedians, it's like, if you're not overweight, are you funny? There's rules, like, you can't be skinny and pretty and funny. I'm all three, sorry to break it to you.
I think a lot of studios today are run by women, and we are entering a time when a lot of women have evolved in Second City and Upright Citizens Brigade and wanted to become writers and comedians.
A lot of comedians, when they have a bad gig, will blame everything but themselves. They'll blame the crowd, or the room was wrong, it had a weird vibe, or the promoter promoted a weird atmosphere.
All of my favorite actresses are comedians at heart: Shirley MacLaine and Madeline Kahn, Diane Keaton and Debra Winger. And they are all amazing dramatic actresses, but everything they do is funny.
Molly Shannon and I used to always talk about that we really felt strongly that we were comedic actors, that we weren't comedians. You just played things real and the comedy came out of the context.
It was a decision to work clean. I just prefer to work that way. I have no problem with comedians who don't work that way. There was a temptation in the early '70s to reconsider. I decided against it.