Quotes About Comedy

I'm not saying that I'm on some crusade to change people's minds. I'm just doing what I do. I'm a comedian, I'm trying to be funny... I think when they see a comedy show with an Iranian and an Egyptian and two Palestinians, I think they go, 'Oh wow, these guys are just like us.'

I started in Shakespeare. I'm classically trained, which, how hilarious is that? Then one night, I saw Second City and thought, 'Wow, that's what I want to do.' But I never thought it would morph into screenplay writing.

Any standup that you see who you go, 'Oh, wow, that guy's, you know, that guy's making it.' Inevitably, they've been doing it 10, 12 years - 10, 15 years. Because it takes time.

I'll see something, and I'll go, 'Oh, wow, that's interesting,' because really, comedy comes from the truth.

When I watch movies with my kid like 'Shrek,' I'm like, 'Wow, this is pretty funny.' That's why I wanted to start doing movies like that - so my kid would laugh at my jokes.

I got a young black woman agent, and she kinda just knew what I would be attracted to. She sent me this pilot for 'Insecure.' I never saw myself as a comedy director, but when I read those pages, I said, 'Wow - this is my life on the page.'

Often, when you're in some of these writing rooms for... and the most restrictive is network television, right? They say, 'Wow, that's a great joke, but we can't do that. Okay, let's try the second joke. Oh, you can't do that one. But the third joke you can do,' and hopefully it will be great, but it will remind people of what the joke really was.

I think there are a lot of things out there that are humorous that people don't realize until you actually show them what is going on. Saran Wrap for one thing. You know, you could pull enough of that out of the box and it will actually kill you. It will get a hold of you, stick to you, and choke you to death.

I consider a CD or a comedy collection as a record of what I've been doing, and I try to wrap it up and start new material.

You start realizing that maybe you're the one night a month that people have out, and they don't need to hear your political views or how dark you can get. They just want to laugh for an hour and go home. Once I wrapped my head around that, my act evolved accordingly.

I loved doing 'Pop Factor,' though I know a lot of people were a bit uncomfortable with that, what with me playing a woman, but for me, as an experiment, taking on the wrath of that genre, it was worth it.

It makes me mad to hear these popular orchestras make a jammed-up comedy of a song like 'Wreck on the Highway.' It ain't a funny song.

Every barbershop has a guy who wrecks shop every time he comes in. He has the whole barbershop laughing. That doesn't mean he's a comedian.

Without talent, I don't care how funny the writers are or how many comedy lines they come up, without wrestlers you can't have a wrestling program.

The reason I don't do the Flair Flop anymore is because women's wrestling is being taken so seriously. I'll only perform something comedic like that at a house show.

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.

Wrestling was like stand-up comedy for me.

That was sort of the 'Second City' approach, which was try to be intelligent and assume your audience is intelligent. We were influenced by 'Monty Python,' too, which would have philosophers in a wrestling match.

To be a true comic, you have to have a signature move. You ever watch wrestling? And your favorite wrestler has the one move that he always does to finish his opponent off, right? Like when he climbs on the rope, and he always jumps off the top rope and finishes off his opponent - that's what a comic has.

I love doing funny promos like the ones I did wrestling Rey Mysterio.

I went to school with Steven Wright, who was the shyest guy I knew, and one day someone suddenly told me that he was in a club doing standup comedy. I went down to his club and he was great. Another friend of mine, who was pretty much a thief by trade, was hosting the show. So I thought, 'If these guys can do it, then so can I.'

I was heavily influenced by Andy Kaufman and Steven Wright.

Steven Wright can do Steven Wright very well. Not everyone can do Steven Wright's jokes with the same results.

I loved Stephen Wright, and I loved Mitch Hedberg, but they seemed like geniuses you could never emulate. You'd just be ripping them off.