Quotes About Stand-up

I love doing stand-up. It's so self-contained - you go there, you do it, you go home - but with telly, there are too many people involved with it with opinions. You have a product, and everyone wants to change it.

Because I was surrounded by so much negativity at some point that it took me going back and doing stand-up to realize, you know, people really like me.

Stand-up is still my favorite, but the podcast is a close second. It's so fun, and it's given me the opportunity to have three-hour conversations with people I wouldn't have otherwise been able to talk to. When I talked to Maynard Keenan from Tool, I almost couldn't believe it was happening.

I get burned out on standup. But I like acting. I do like it. But sometimes you just feel like a monkey. You just feel like a complete tool. But I like it. I do like it. Stand-up is just more free. A lot more freedom because you just do what you want to do.

I think Carrot Top is hilarious.

I'm topical as hell. That's not going to change if I lose weight. There are a lot of comics that do 'fat jokes' better than I do - Louie Anderson, John Pinette, Gabriel Iglesias. These guys are phenomenal.

I mean, the number one goal is to make people laugh, that's definitely the first aim; but aside from that, when we discuss which topics to talk about, the second goal is to try and make a point about it.

I need to keep my ad-libbing skills honed and make sure I'm able to banter with people and treat topics a bit more light-heartedly. But as a stand-up, first and foremost, my job is to make sure that I can write the routine that hopefully people will talk about when something big happens.

In the mid-1970s, there was this huge boom of stand-up comedy throughout North America. I went to see a show at a club called Yuk-Yuks, in Toronto, and I was just fascinated. I ended up coming back for amateur hour on a Monday at midnight and got up there without any thought as to what might come of it.

It's painful for me to watch someone who isn't funny. It's horrifying to sit in the back and watch some guy who just totally sucks.

I wouldn't totally rule out doing Letterman or the Tonight Show if I had a set that I just happened to write that I thought was funny but was still appropriate for network censors. But I'm not going to go out of my way.

Stand-up comics reflect less of a visual humor and more of a commentary.

The only way to get better at stand-up is to do loads of gigs, and I don't know. I spread myself pretty thin to get the stage time. I'd love to do more, really.

I think with a comedian, when you get to the point of a greatest hits, it's kind of an acknowledgment that you've been doing stand-up a long time, which not very many people do.

I think stand is better now than it's ever been. I think it's the greatest time ever to do standup comedy.

My most persistent memory of stand - up is of my mouth being in the present and my mind being in the future: the mouth speaking the line, the body delivering the gesture, while the mind looks back, observing, analyzing, judging, worrying, and then deciding when and what to say next. Enjoyment while performing was rare - enjoyment would have been an indulgent loss of focus that comedy cannot afford.

I did stand-up comedy for 18 years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four years were spent in wild success. I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a byproduct. The course was more plodding than heroic.

In a sense, this book is not an autobiography but a biography, because I am writing about someone I used to know. Yes, these events are true, yet sometimes they seemed to have happened to someone else, and I often felt like a curious onlooker or someone trying to remember a dream. I ignored my stand-up career for twenty-five years, but now, having finished this memoir, I view this time with surprising warmth. One can have, it turns out, an affection for the war years.

Doing comedy alone onstage is the ego's last stand.

DID STAND-UP COMEDY for eighteen years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four were spent in wild success.

I love doing radio, and I love doing stand-up, obviously. I'm good flying up to four hours, but anything past that, I want to kill myself.

I love playing in the UK because there are some topics that you just can't talk about in the States without getting run out of town. So let me just say this: Louis C. K.'s new show sucks.

I think the people that most often cross a line are comedians. I think they relish that, and take pride in that on some level - at least, from what little I've seen and understand about people that do stand-up.

I am a comedian. You may or may not find me funny, but the fact remains, that I am a comedian.