Josh Gondelman Quotes

Stand-up, I find it really difficult. It's not really my thing.

I don't get many hecklers now but answering them is an art form in itself.

You can't be a proper comic unless you've been out on stage and felt the fear.

I never wanted to be road comic.

I'd like to go back to standup. I don't like to think I've done my last gig. At the moment it terrifies me, I get really nervous. It's a great buzz when it goes well.

Stand-up. It's the only place I'm comfortable.

I started by doing a little funny story, and then I started going to open mics. I realized I had a lot of work to do - you have to get over the stage fright and get your stage presence up. It took me some time, but I finally feel that I'm at a point where I feel comfortable on stage and giving my point of view.

People often tell me that they have no idea how I can do standup. The idea of trying to make a large group of strangers laugh is, for many, absolutely petrifying - and it is - but there are ways of gradually developing the material that can ease the fear.

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.

One place that I really feel comfortable is being a comedienne. I'm very socially inept. There's so many things that I can not do in life, and this is, like, the one thing that I have mastery over. It's my world. And anybody who's coming to the show, it's like they're coming because they know that this is my world.

When people heckle me, I have the microphone. And the press has the microphone.

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've been doing stand-up since '89.

Sometimes, the most daunting thing about performing is making eye contact with your audience, so just look above them and at the corners of the room. Soon, you'll totally forget they're there.

I never used to speak to the audience at all. I never really knew what to say onstage.

I don't think one should be comfortable standing on a stage with people applauding and laughing at every stupid thing you say.

I haven't really done a lot of comedy. It's something that terrifies me.

The idea of doing stand-up is terrifying to me.

I think the challenge is going out in front of a paying audience with absolutely nothing and trying to entertain them for two hours. Thankfully, I only think about that right before we go on, and then once we're out there, everything's fine.

I don't really do stand-up.

The only time I don't get nervous is if I'm doing a home club in L.A. and I know all of my friends there because then I play to my friends. When I first started doing comedy, I hated it when my friends came; it made me more nervous. Now I just try to make them laugh.

In standup, you don't have anything near you except a microphone. There's something a lot more self-conscious feeling when there's cameras coming in for close-ups. It makes you very aware.

I am not a natural show-off. Some of the monster comedians are terrifyingly assured, and I don't have that, and that's held me back.

It's one thing to practise in front of a mirror at home, but another to do it in front of 800 people or on live TV.

The whole thing with playing on a stage with mics and all that has always been kind of uncomfortable to me.