Stand-up Quotes

I think comics in New York are interested in being comics. And there're comics in L.A. who are touring comics, who are certainly more interested in stand-up, but a lot of L.A. stand-ups are really looking to do something else.

My stand-up act is very clean.

I never wanted to be a model. I never wanted to be a serious actress. I started off doing comedy. I did a stand-up comedy camp at the Laugh Factory, and I started out on Nickelodeon.

My ambition was to stop waiting tables. That was how I measured success: finally, I was able to stop waiting tables, and I was able to pay the rent, and that was by being a stand-up comic. Not a very good stand-up comic, but good enough to make a living.

Stand-up is the kind of gig that'll show you where you're at.

Who do I like? I am a big fan of French and Saunders - not that that they are particularly stand-up I have to say, but I think they have been great for women and they are of themselves just incredibly funny whether they are male or female.

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.

Prison widens your circle of friends. In my stand-up, I can now talk about things that no one else has the right to touch.

I did stand-up, weird and ignorant stuff about my career - anything for a laugh.

You try various things when you're growing up. I was an attache in the Foreign Service for a while and then I drove a bulldozer, but neither of those panned out for me so it had to be stand-up.

Stand-up comedy is tough right now. Anybody can come to a concert, tape you, and put you up on the Internet. You either fight it or embrace it.

You can't cancel my stand-up tours. It's impossible. There's too many separate bosses. There is no 'bosses.'

I started to do a study on how not to do stand-up comedy. Yeah, it's lonely work. You die, you die alone. It's you, the light, and the audience. If you win, you win big. If you lose, you lose big time.

I can hardly think of an occasion when I've got into a stand-up fight with any political opponent. I've got my views, people know what they are, they can agree or they can choose to disagree. I'm not going to waste time just rubbishing everybody else.

I could never do stand-up because it's that thing of having to get up on stage. And out of every 10 jokes you tell, nine of them have to get a really good response.

I like doing stand-up and I love putting out TV specials.

The mistake that people make in stand-up is thinking they're profound or they're deep when there are so many people who have more worthwhile ways of phrasing things.

When you are doing stand-up comedy, you are the writer, producer, director, sometimes bouncer.

I think right now is the best time for stand-up, ever. I sincerely do.

I didn't really like the aloneness of doing stand-up.

I really loved what I was doing being creative and being funny as a stand-up comedian.

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.

But you really - I always think that a director has got to adapt to whatever the needs of the actor are. You know, so if you take someone like Eddie Murphy, who is not a big fan of rehearsal. You know he comes out of stand-up. He comes - it's all about capturing the moment - in the moment, you know.

Live performance really terrifies me. I haven't done it, really, in years. I think that's why I retired from my brief career in stand-up.

Lesbians are likely to be drawn to stand-up, if only because it's cheaper to produce and therefore more accessible for women. But the very form of stand-up is masculine.

When you snatch little pieces of other people's lives and try to palm them off as your own, that's more disgusting than anything. Robin Williams is a huge thief. Denis Leary is a huge thief. His whole stand-up career is based on Bill Hicks, a brilliant guy who died years ago.

I think that people who do enjoy my stand-up comedy and the people who get it and the people who are taken in by it, they see that I'm a guy that has love of the game.

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

My stand-up is quite good now, people say. It's just like a big conversation each time. Every gig is a rehearsal.

Wrestling was like stand-up comedy for me. Every night I had a live audience of 25,000 people to win over. My goal was never to be the loudest or the craziest. It was to be the most entertaining.