Quotes About Comedy

Tina Fey is my mentor, whether she likes it or not.

I've always been a huge fan of Tina Fey's. She's a very unique storyteller and has such a great voice and sense of character and comedy, and manages to do things that are oftentimes very broad but still have a lot of heart to them.

Normally, it's one or the other - a pretty, straight woman or a more charactery woman who isn't supposed to be attractive. But women like Tina Fey are leading the charge on being both. You can be funny and attractive.

My motto is 'In Tina Fey I trust.'

For Lennon and me, we grew up with Laverne and Shirley or Lucy and Ethel. For us, those are our inspirations. And I think Amy Poehler and Tina Fey led the way for us to be fearless in the way we kept shoving our message and our comedy voice down people's throats until they listened.

I remember thinking, 'If I can make Tina Fey laugh, I can die happy.'

I had done some small-sketch stuff in college, and at that time, Tina Fey was becoming a heavy influence on my life and my world. I decided I wanted to do what she was doing.

My comedy isn't about being attractive - it's about how the bar of dumb seems so low right now, and I desperately want to raise the bar of dumb just a tiny bit.

I used to work over a bar. That was - there was no stage. I stood over a tiny bar. Louis Prima, rest his soul, he worked there. I was the guy that filled in when he was off the stage.

I always do a little bit of improv. I did some of 'The Office,' a tiny bit in 'Extras,' a bit more in 'Derek.'

I never decided I wanted to be an actor. I just started doing standup because I love standup. Everything else has sort of been these tiny steps leading to this.

A lot of people ask, 'What's the best advice Tina Fey's given you?' But she doesn't, like, go about doling out advice - like, 'I've got another tip for you!'

I'm in awful shape. I'm trying to get in better shape. My girlfriend, she's in good shape. She gives me health tips sometimes, like, 'Hannibal, you're going to die.' Stuff like that.

On 'Whose Line,' we had six, seven, eight scenes per show, so everything was pretty quick. And there's a lot of games that we just got tired of, like 'Hats' and 'World's Worst' and 'Hoedown' and stuff.

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.

A pitfall of making a comedy with a studio-and it's also an American cultural thing-is that I get tired of being encouraged to go always for laughs.

I just feel like people like a little break. Especially at 12:37 at night, you go, like, 'I'm just tired of the snarky right now. I just want to lie down and have somebody make me laugh for an hour. Entertain me, and then I'm going to sleep with a smile on my face.' That's my job; that's what I do.

It's like, backstage at 'SNL,' like, if you come back after a show or something, or a lot of times even at the after-parties, we're just pretty tired and like, 'Hey, what's up.' Just getting a drink and kind of chilling out. Nothing crazy.

Standup really is a young man's game, a single young man's game. Even when I was younger, when I wasn't single, it was hard to be on the road because you go through relationships because your girlfriend kinda got tired of you being gone.

I even get tired performing standup, which is normally a low-impact exercise in futility but looks hard the way I do it. That's why I take a lot of breaks, often stopping in the middle of a joke to catch my breath, or blame the crowd for not laughing before the punchline.

People complain that joking about serious subjects is 'making light' of them. Isn't that a good idea? Comedy lets the air out of the bully's tires.

I'm going to do 'The Social Network Two: The Electric Boogaloo.' And I have a part in 'Beige Swan.' I'm going to be the lead, but I don't dance. I just do a lot of sitting down. It's too tiring to get up and dance around. That should be coming out in 20-never.

Obviously I'm a big fan of 'South Park', but it gets tiring at times when there's so much of it.

From November through December, 'tis the season for 'Home Alone!'