Quotes About Stand-up

Stand-up is a weird animal. There are people who really want to know what you think about things, your opinion on life. But then there are people who think you're just that beautician in 'Legally Blonde,' who doesn't have opinions on anything. Or that I'm Stifler's mom and hot for it all the time.

I'm not opposed to talking about airline food.

When I was in high school, I was doing all the plays. My drama teacher, Melody Duggan, was the one one who first made me do stand-up. She's the origin of the whole thing; it's all her. In high school in Denver, that was kind of the beginning of it all.

In my stand-up, I generally improvise from an outline.

It really helps a comedian to be an outsider.

One of the things I figured out was that I was having good gigs when I wore jumpers. It was because I looked more like an outsider, so they expected me to talk about weird stuff rather than normal stuff.

When I started out in stand-up, I was already used to speaking in front of people, how to project, control my voice - a lot of learning curves I had overcome.

The first time I ever did stand up comedy a guy yelled out "Down in front". So I just sat down and watched the rest of the movie.

The funny thing is, Dennis Miller got me back into comedy.

Stand-up don't get no respect - it's the hardest thing to do in show business. You don't have no band and there's no music.

I was at college doing performing arts, and just spending all my time mucking about, and the lecturers thought I would be pretty good at stand-up, so I gave it a whirl.

Comedy is really not like any other art form in that it's very specialized and varied in it's content, but generic in it's title.

Stand-up is probably the most solo performance in art.

The ability to workshop in stand-up comedy is incomparable to any art form, in my opinion.

I really admire stand-up, and I think I would have loved to learn how to do it. I think it's terrifying and thrilling. A really cool thing to do. It's a dying art, in a way.

What was that joke about a guy being so thin he had to stand in the same place twice to throw a shadow?

There are millions of comedians around or certainly there were when I started. They play nightclubs, or on TV, or at private functions, and they all need material: jokes, bits, routines, something to say. Most of them were not very good as evidenced by the fact that they needed other people to put words in their mouth, funny words. If left on their own, they couldn't coax a chuckle from a manic fat man on laughing gas.

The only criticisms I have are that, one, many are gratuitously dirty. Remember, I'm saying gratuitously. I don't mind dirty when it contributes to the funny routine, but since language was liberated in the sixties, it's embarrassing to hear acts punctuate their material with the old so-called dirty words. Apparently, the

Where did all these thirsty comics come from? I never knew a monologist to keel over from dehydration. Actors play hours of Shakespeare without Hamlet or Lear sneaking behind a drape for a belt of Poland Spring water.

I think I can safely say I'm the only American stand-up comic who played the Eiffel Tower.

The great thing about stand up is you get to do other things. You get to do your stand up tours but you also get to do 'Have I Got News For You.' You get to do a sitcom, but you also get to do the 'Great British Bake Off: An Extra Slice.' I'm easily bored, so I like the variety.

You know, I'm playing the Mirage in Vegas, the main room... About 5 percent of all comics end up as the main headliner on the Vegas Strip, so that's a big deal for me. Getting to do my stand-up the way I have this summer is really what I've dreamed of since I was about 10 years old.

I think Ross Noble is the only person that I've seen really storm a stand-up slot at a festival, and that was when he led 3,000 people on a conga out of the tent and across the entire site to a vegetarian food truck.

Stand-up came out of three things. Frustration, necessity and arrogance. I didn't have a great career ahead of me in anything. Someone literally said to me, 'You should try stand-up,' and took me to a venue.