Quotes About Stand-up

The jokes I used to do on 'Sex and the City' were always comic character things, and they were rarely hard jokes. As soon as you go up in front of people, it demands laughter.

I love doing the radio, and it's different every day. But stand-up is just you and the immediate reaction of the audience. So I love both.

I feel like some of the delivery that people find funny is literally me trying to remember the exact line in real time.

It's a strange old thing, but I think an awful lot of 'Inbetweeners' fans still don't realise I'm a stand-up.

I tell people that stand-up's like golf: you gotta do it every day to get it down - or at least three times a week to get it down.

If you're watching a comedian on television and he's making a political point, I would say he's gotten too serious.

Everybody wants to be Doug Stanhope; everybody wants to be Bill Hicks - and those are great people to aim for, but they had the fundamentals down. They knew how to be funny.

I've seen other comics, with great pleasure, watching their own specials, and I don't know how or why they do it.

Open mics are a great way to rework your material to see what punchlines land best.

I've always worked toward, and felt comfortable with, you know, pausing and guiding the audience on a longer bit.

I've said this before, and I'm sure there are people who disagree, but I feel like one of the reasons there aren't a lot more women in stand-up - and there are many more now; it's not parity, but it's getting there - is that women are not socialized to look stupid or silly. They're socialized to be pretty and precious.

Women are hilarious.

I got lucky. I won the San Francisco Stand-Up Comedy Competition in 1977 while I was still at San Francisco State.

I decided I'd try my hand as a stand-up comedian, as I loved making people laugh, and appeared at the Latitude Festival, won the 2007 Laughing Horse New Act of the Year, and was a nominee for winner of the 2007 So You Think You're Funny competition.

I don't know if comedy is a male sport. I always wondered that.

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.

I've taught people in improv classes, then watched them move to Los Angeles to become Emmy winners and movie stars. That experience, for anyone wondering, is both super exciting and also makes you put a microscope on your own life choices. It causes you to question why you still perform stand-up in so many Brooklyn basements.

A bass should sound like a bass with the thump of the finger against the wood, like it began with stand up.

I've always been criticised for how filthy my material is. Victoria Wood said to me once, 'I wish I was a bit ruder, like you,' and I said, 'Well, I wish I was a bit cleaner, like you.'

The only thing I really recommend, if you're starting out in stand-up is to not try to copy anybody else. You can be influenced by people. I was influenced by Steve Martin and Bob Newhart and Woody Allen, but I never tried to be someone else. I always tried to be myself. And the reason people are successful is they're unique.

My influences were Woody Allen and Lenny Bruce.

My heroes - people like Woody Allen - were stand-up comedians. Therefore, I always felt I should give it a go.

Some comedians tell nice jokes that you can tell to your kids. Some use bad words - they work 'blue.' If you don't want to hear a joke that's blue, you shouldn't go to a comedy club where a comedian who makes blue jokes is performing.

Day-to-day life is a lot of work. I work a lot on stand-up stuff, and then day-to-day life and, you know, just living. It's always different. Try to work out, try to stay in shape, and try to have some fun.