Quotes About Comedy

I wouldn't call myself a standup in the presence of Jerry Seinfeld or Chris Rock, but I do my share of it and it has been and remains part of my activity and I like it.

It's still a soft R, but when I watch other people's standup, I'm dumbfounded that people call me dirty. That's only because I did family television.

I think when you write something as standup material, it forces you to think about how you're gonna tell that story in one way, and then, when you get the opportunity to shoot it, you almost have to reframe how you go about it and rethink the entire process.

I enjoy doing standup, but when I'm 50, I don't know if I'll still enjoy doing standup. It might be one of those things where I find other palettes that I want to paint on and make comedic.

I can't imagine a time I don't want to do standup.

I just like doing standup, that's all I'm interested in or good at.

I'm a standup comedian, so I need people.

Standup comedy was my weird hobby. I would drag my poor parents out to the only open mics that were in coffee shops instead of bars. I'd get up and go, 'Hi, I'm 17, and I have jokes about matriculation!' At the time I was like, 'Why is no one laughing?'

You can play a gig as a band and not know that they hated you; with standup, after every line, you know.

Getting on stage doing standup anytime is hard. You never know what you're going to say. You live and die on your next word.

There's no idea or concept in comedy you could do that hasn't been attacked from some angle. But if you start leaving punchlines out so you'll look cool, I don't get that. But I don't watch standup anyway, so I don't know what they're doing.

Early on, people told me I was making Chinese people look bad. I've been living with this accent. I had already been doing standup for a while. I knew my voice already. I myself never wanted to make my accent the butt of the joke. I never want it to be, 'I'm laughing at your accent.'

When I was in New York, I got to see Joan Rivers do an hour of material, and it blew my mind. I don't remember how old she was at the time, but she just had this edgy hour that had so much funny stuff in it, and she was so fearless. If you only watch her on the red carpet, you don't get a sense of what a legendary standup comedian she is.

I don't have courage in my convictions and I'm not interested in serious things or politics: if you're doing an hour of standup, you should talk about a few serious things.

My first summer in college, I interned for Arena Stage in D.C. and taught a disastrous class on standup comedy to middle schoolers at the Arena Stage camp. I had never taught anything before, and needless to say, I quickly lost control of the class.

Before I started doing standup, I knew that I had what it takes to develop an act. I went down to clubs with not many people there, and I just worked on it, man. A lot of my friends are comedians, so that part had a lot of encouragement, even though the shows were very caveman-like.

When I go into schools to speak, I am not giving a speech - it's really a one-man show. I call it 'didactic standup.'

When I got a part in 'All American Girl,' in 1994, I remember thinking, 'Now I have a series, I'm not going to need to do standup,' but every night I'd go out afterward and get onstage somewhere.

People see me on the 'Daily Show' or 'About a Boy'. But the reality is that I only got into this business to do standup comedy.

I still do standup.

I think as a standup performer you have to feel the audience. So the audience kind of dictates what they get, you know?

I did standup comedy. I opened once for Jay Leno.

I have yet to see one of those Comedy Central shows with multiple standup comics that doesn't include someone the size of the Hindenburg.

When I finished my residency in New Orleans, I went to L.A. where I would work as a doctor during the day, and then at night I would actually go to The Improv and do standup, all the while kind of cultivating my comedy resume.