Quotes About Stand-up

I do secret stand-up shows around New York. I announce and tweet this to nobody - I get onstage and I do a quick five minutes.

When I was doing stand-up, I was about twenty, and I really think that that's a little too young. I didn't have a whole lot of life experience to draw on.

Drama is not my passion. If I do it, it's for a check. It's not what I want to do. Comedy's my thing. Stand up's my thing. Everything that comes from that is frosting on the cake.

Ultimately, an audience wants to laugh. That's who they like, the comedian who makes them laugh.

George Carlin is an influence on a generation. He made me want to do comedy.

I personally have no interest in being a star or a celebrity. I want my stand-up comedy and how I think as a comedian to be recognized and successful.

I have deep comedic roots, and I want to be funny.

With stand-up, you can be as freeform as you want to be. You can say what you want, how you want, at any moment without constraint.

Some people use stand-up to get something else in their careers, but it's truly the art form of stand-up I love.

You do get a bit paranoid that you're becoming a sort of narcissist, an artistic solipsist when you're doing stand-up.

It's a very odd thing with Hollywood, where you do stand-up, you're good at it, then they go, 'How would you like to be a horrible actor?' Then you say, 'All right, that sounds good. I'll do that.'

Comedy is really getting quite popular in South Africa.

What I do is not regional comedy, and it is not based in the southern area.

When I came into stand-up, I found a certain safe space of intellectualism, of camaraderie, of excellence that really has always been natural to me but always felt foreign in the other spaces I've been in.

I watch the wonderful Dara O'Briain refereeing 'Mock the Week,' where they all compete with each other. I wouldn't be on that. It frightens the life out of me.

Most modern comedy is crap.

My first time on TV doing stand-up, I actually did this show in Holland called 'The Comedy Factory' hosted by Jorgen Raymann. It was in 2006 in Holland. It was amazing. I had only been doing stand-up for four years, and I booked that gig through the Just For Laughs Montreal festival, and they flew me out and put me up.

More people are going out to comedy shows than they were before.

I feel that I'm a stand-up comedian more than anything else, that's my job.

I used to go to open mics in New York when I was starting out, and it was mostly just people who wanted an audience to look at them for eight minutes on a stage.

For writing stand-up, I have to have a little bit of anger and frustration to be motivated to do it. Stand-up, for me, comes from kind of a hostile engine.

I was onstage last night talking. I said, "You know the diaphragm is a pain in the ass." Someone yelled out, "You were putting it in the wrong way."

Your online life is a variety show, so if anything, the fact that you didn't put me in your stand-up act means you covet me. Maybe even more than I realize, since right now your hand is heading to your cunt yet again.

I'd like to tell you some jokes now, but you'd only laugh.