Quotes About Stand-up

And of course I didn't make any money from stand up for years, so I had temp jobs. That was the way I made money.

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.

People, I guess, generally come to see me do stand-up with a working knowledge of my broad sense of humor on 'The Daily Show'... I don't think anyone would mistake me as an actual anchor.

Improvisation is almost like the retarded cousin in the comedy world. We've been trying forever to get improvisation on TV. It's just like stand-up. It's best when it's just left alone. It doesn't translate always on TV. It's best live.

HBO was a big thing for stand-up, and when you're a broke kid with absolutely nothing to do on the weekend, there was always video recording your HBO specials. I would just rewind those specials and watch them like they were new again.

From 1987 to 1992, I was on the road for 40 weeks a year playing comedy clubs, and that was during the 'comedy boom.'

I thought it would be a funny concept to publish a book about stand-up comedy with Faber, the poetry publisher, and to apply to stand-up the same sort of weight of annotation that you would to a classic work of literature, an epic poem. I thought that would be funny.

I did stand-up, weird and ignorant stuff about my career - anything for a laugh.

There are these showcase clubs where 14 guys will go on in a row and people are laughing at everything, and I'm like - 'I can't laugh that much. That's so weird to me.'

I never really watched much stand-up growing up. I just was not really that into it. But I can say I honestly fell in love with it the second I touched the microphone. It was like this weird thing where it's like, 'Oh, yeah, this is what I'm supposed to do.'

Being a harsh, dirty comic, the last person on earth I ever expected to help my career was Jay Leno. I had always thought of performing on 'The Tonight Show' as an unachievable goal, because I bought into the myth that only squeaky clean, family-friendly material would be welcome there.

As a standup comedian, you have to develop a sense of fearlessness. It's really important for your livelihood and your well-being. And if you don't do that, you're going to fail; you're never going to be able to stand up on the cliff and jump off.

I do like a well-written sketch with a bunch of jokes in it, and I like stand-up with good jokes in it it.

It was football I enjoyed most. When I moved to L.A. to become a stand-up comedian, I thought it might be a good comedy hook to also be the punter for USFL club The L.A. Express, so I started practicing for the tryouts. Luckily, my stand-up took off, and I didn't need to do it.

I came to New York and started doing stand-up and improv, and started auditioning for commercials and voiceovers and stuff. My first job was on a pilot of that prank show called 'Boiling Points' on MTV.

I don't think it's necessary to do stand-up to be a presenter, but I like it, because it keeps me sharp, especially when something like 'Take Me Out' is 80% is ad-libbed, so that works for me.

My favorite comedians are just presenting an argument, and they're doing it in a funny way.

I like Chris Rock. He's dangerous.

For the first six months of my stand-up career, I was talking like Danny Dyer. I was doing a lot of 'alright guvnors?' It wasn't true to who I was.

I don't know if the art of stand-up will survive. Stand-up seems dated. Now you can do a mini-movie or a short with a beginning, middle, and end. A guy standing there seems a little old - especially when you can go on the Internet and see 'Funny or Die.'

The '80s was a great decade for comedy.

When you see a comedian on stage, the best comedians make it feel like a conversation. But it's not. We have very little interest in what an audience has to say during a performance. Being a stand-up comedian, you're an egomaniac to some degree. Everyone wants to hear what you have to say, apparently. That's not how real relationships work.

There's something about us as stand-ups that when we're on our feet, we feel more in control of the situation and in control of our bodies and our delivery.

I'm probably not very good at rom-com, being funny on demand; I'll leave that to the comedians.