Quotes About Stand-up

I don't laugh so much at jokes and premises as I do at a guy who goes onstage and starts twitching and acting funny.

I'm lucky enough to have two different platforms to perform on - I do stand-up comedy, and I have 'SNL.' That's where I make my most controversial statements because I can explain myself and I'm in control of the microphone, as opposed to Twitter, where it's in the hands of the reader.

My stand-up is far more rooted in reality than my Twitter.

I initially signed up for Twitter just to do jokes I wasn't going to do in my stand-up routine.

What's cool about Twitter is that you can make a joke about something very of-the-moment or random that I wouldn't be able to joke about in stand-up.

Look, you know, you can't please everybody. I'm a stand-up comic. I know that. It doesn't matter how funny you are and how well you do, there's two people that are going to walk out of there hating you.

There are certain types of stand-up, who are very successful, who do one type of joke, and never stray out of that. The audience knows that he's the depressive comedian, he's the up-beat, crazy comic. He's the one that talks about real life.

Stand-up comedy and comedy in general is the ultimate form of free speech, because you get to poke holes in all the pretentious bubbles politicians and pundits and popes and pretenders try to float over our heads.

I would love to do more TV and do movies for the experience, but my ultimate focus is stand-up. It's the number one thing that I love most because there is nothing like being with a live audience.

Moms Mabley blazed a path for female stand-ups in a housecoat and floppy hat. Phyllis Diller worked equally hard to make herself unattractive to men and non-threatening to women.

Any comic like myself owes everything he has to Lenny Bruce. He was the originator. The godfather of uncensored American stand-up is clearly Lenny Bruce.

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.

I don't think I push boundaries. I find that other people feel that way. To me, it's just about going up there and speaking the truth, whatever that is.

I don't like speaking publicly when I don't have to be funny.

I have an aversion to comedy where everybody speaks in punchlines.

Love is universal, luckily, but also in general I've found that whenever I've been the most specific in my stand-up, revealing some weird neurosis or quirk I'm ashamed of, that's what people relate to the most. Specificity is key!

If you're a comic, you don't have a rehearsal room; you rehearse on stage. My main concern is remembering everything. I've written lots of material, but how do you memorise 90 minutes? That's one hell of a long speech. I've always had problems with that.

When I started doing stand-up again, a lot of it was coming from an angrier place, and I quickly learned that doesn't spell a good time in a comedy club.

Something about New York, man: You can do more comedy there probably than you can anywhere in the world. If you're interested in being funny, New York is the place to go.

I have never pretended to be any kind of super-religious kind of man, but I feel very strongly that you can be funny without being dirty.

Nobody mountain bikes anymore - or ever did - in comedy, so I have to go by myself.

I started as a stand-up comedian at charity shows in Mumbai.

My inspiration to do comedy came from many places. Saturday mornings, I would watch Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis movies. I later got into watching stand-ups like Eddie Murphy, who was my main inspiration.

I like Louis C.K., Chris Rock. Old schools like Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy.