Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I think a lot comes from having the experience of doing stand-up comedy. It allows you to figure out the psychology of an audience; what things are funny and not.
I'm a comedian, for God's sake. Viewers shouldn't trust me. And you know what? They're hip enough to know they shouldn't trust me. I'm just doing stand-up comedy.
I'm a stand-up comic. Anything else I do besides that is a plus, but stand-up comedy is what I do, it's what I've been doing and it's what I'm going to keep doing.
Stand-up can take you in so many different places, man. So many doors can be opened up from stand-up comedy, and the first one that was opened up for me was acting.
I keep my stand-up comedy notes in a pile on my desk. I don't organize my act. I keep myself in a state of confusion. It stresses me out, but I prefer creative chaos.
I think that people who do enjoy my stand-up comedy and the people who get it and the people who are taken in by it, they see that I'm a guy that has love of the game.
I thought that I was going to be a stand-up comedian or an actress. Turns out, I can't act my way out of a paper bag and stand-up comedy is a lot harder than it appears.
A lot of stand-up comedy is embarrassing: too many idiots doing it in orange neckties against brick walls. I find most sitcoms embarrassing, too, because they seem so forced.
Georgia was a great place to live, but I wanted to get out because I knew the opportunities for what I was doing - stand-up comedy and eventually acting - were in Los Angeles.
I have a work-out regime; I am not a maniac. It sounds cliche, but stand-up comedy, doing a one-man show, helps keep me young, and yes, it is exhausting, but I don't collapse.
Stand-up comedy is all you. It's your show, it's your game. You control every aspect of it - of that experience and that expression. There's really nothing quite as satisfying.
Stand-up comedy is a sickness. Who wouldn't want a room full of people laughing and screaming at you just because of who you are? Nothing is as good, except maybe having a baby.
Well, I started trying stand-up before I joined Google, actually. And then I went broke because that's what happens when you try stand-up comedy. You're actually paying to perform.
Although no one explicitly wants a president who could have a reliable fall back career in stand-up comedy, everyone shudders at the thought of a Rutherford B. Hayes or John Kerry.
Ellen DeGeneres is a huge influence in my life. She's one of the reasons why I wanted to do stand-up comedy. I was a big fan of her stand-up before she even came out of the closet.
I eventually became an actor, starting with doing stand-up comedy in New York and then theater wherever they would let me. Finally, I moved out here to Los Angeles and got on a show.
I never wanted to be a model. I never wanted to be a serious actress. I started off doing comedy. I did a stand-up comedy camp at the Laugh Factory, and I started out on Nickelodeon.
If the 'Chappelle's Show' had stayed on, I seriously doubt I would have developed this fast as a stand-up comedian. I probably would never have taken stand-up comedy really seriously.
My influences are a wide variety: from Dave Chappelle stand-up comedy specials on YouTube, to watching chick-flick comedy movies, to scrolling through stuff people say on the Internet.
Stand-up comedy is what I do, and it's so rewarding. If you write a joke and tell it to an audience of 15,000 people who laugh their heads off at it, it's the best feeling in the world.
I was a very special child. I did stand-up comedy. I did it all. My family didn't understand. 'Aren't you tired?' I'm like, 'No.' I'm like an insomniac, I hardly sleep, I'm always on the move.
I do films which get me out of my comedian routine so that I don't get bored being a stand-up comedian. And with films, it's here today, gone tomorrow. So stand-up comedy is here to stay for me.
A talk show is about having a look at a famous face, a bit of stand-up comedy, knockabout stuff - an interview is what Barbara Walters or Connie Chung does in the States, in-depth, done properly.
Wrestling was like stand-up comedy for me. Every night I had a live audience of 25,000 people to win over. My goal was never to be the loudest or the craziest. It was to be the most entertaining.
I really don't want to do anything that resembles stand-up comedy. But I will agree to say that I am doing it, and I will hope that people expect it to be that, so I can thwart those expectations.
I started to do a study on how not to do stand-up comedy. Yeah, it's lonely work. You die, you die alone. It's you, the light, and the audience. If you win, you win big. If you lose, you lose big time.
The two things I understand best are stand-up comedy and martial arts. And those things require an ultimate grasp of the truth. You have to be objective about your skills and abilities to compete in both.
Have four things going. I have stand-up comedy, two television shows and I'm working on a play. I like to work, and I fear that something could fall through. You know what they say: 'The show must go off.'
Stand-up comedy is a very hard thing on the spirit. There are people who transcend it, like Jack Benny and Steve Martin, but in its essence, it's soul-destroying. It tends to turn people into control freaks.
Stand-up comedy seems like a terrifying thing. Objectively. Before anyone has done it, it seems like one of the most frightening things you could conceive, and there's just no shortcut - you just have to do it.
Nobody wanted to help me get my start, not to mention it's tough being a female in a man's world of stand-up comedy. It's a very competitive world, and it was a challenge to find my own voice, stick to my guns.
Dylan Moran, my favourite comedian, was walking down the street in Edinburgh. I nearly got run over as I sprinted up to him to tell him I was his biggest fan. His stand-up comedy gives me a stitch from laughing.
Stand-up comedy and comedy in general is the ultimate form of free speech, because you get to poke holes in all the pretentious bubbles politicians and pundits and popes and pretenders try to float over our heads.
New York State is giant and has some of the most beautiful landscape on the Eastern seaboard. There is so much history in New York State, from the Erie Canal to the Catskills, the birth of American stand-up comedy.
I just love entertaining. I will do anything - stand-up comedy, video games, fencing, internet shorts - I just want to keep being lucky enough to entertain people anyway I can. I try never to limit my art to a medium.
I see myself touring internationally - everywhere, every theater, every arena - and putting out stand-up comedy specials until I can't even stand no more. Even then, I'll probably do my comedy special in a hospital bed.
Stand-up comedy is a lot about amplifying emotions and situations; movie acting has a lot to do with mellowing things down and making them subtle. The transition was almost terrifying because of the magnitude of change.
I am very proud of what 'Johnny' achieved in stand-up comedy because he believed entirely in giving an audience the best kick he could. But he was someone who was quite detrimental to my health, both emotionally and physically.
When I was nine, we'd take a bus to the seaside. Coming back, we'd take turns entertaining, singing songs and the like. I tried some stand-up comedy. I had a captive audience in that bus. Then I realized I wanted to do more than that.
'Hedwig' was pretty much all the things I wanted to do that other people said I probably shouldn't do: drag, punk rock, stand-up comedy... You know, combine them all in a thing that's supremely uncommercial from the objective point of view.
When it comes to English stand-up comedy, Indians have only seen the best - Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Cosby and the like. So, when someone claims to be an English stand-up comedian in India, he'd better be very good if he's going to make a life of it.
I guess you get pigeon-holed in Hollywood, but I'm ok with that because I've been able to do a lot. I started in the theater, then I went to stand-up comedy, and then when I went into the movies to do comedy and drama and big movies and small movies.
I kind of thought that stand-up comedy would suffer from the Internet because people seem to know more about the craft of stand-up than ever before. I thought it would seem trite. Kind of like if you know more about magicians, you wouldn't love them.
I think it's a very easy thing to make people laugh, especially with a script, and then you've just got to dress up. That's also the idea of comedy in Bollywood. But in stand-up comedy, there's a man with just some content trying to make everyone laugh.
I'm doing stand-up comedy. I'm working on a one-woman show about how I don't like my baby. There is a period of time where a baby is born where the next 3 months is harrowing. A lot of people say it's the most wonderful time, but for me it was harrowing.
You know, it wasn't even that I'm a funny guy, I just loved stand-up comedy and I wanted to do it. It was one of the few things in my life that I knew I was going to be able to do, and I also felt as though I'd be able to do it the way I wanted to do it.
Getting up in front of the toughest crowds, you know, playing pubs in South Armagh - where people didn't necessarily even know what stand-up comedy was - you had to force yourself to do it. It went against every instinct in your body, but you did it anyway.
I went from an unemployed actor's life to doing stand-up comedy, and that was fortuitous. It's not the usual way the crow flies, going from being in a TV sketch show to playing one of Shakespeare's finest characters, but, hey, that's the way it has happened.
Comedy doesn't really matter that much; I know that. I treat it like an adult - I don't treat it like a child or a god, which some people do. This might just be in America, but 'stand-up comedy' is something very particular that I don't particularly relate to.
I did stand-up comedy for 18 years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four years were spent in wild success. I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a byproduct. The course was more plodding than heroic.