Bill Burr Quotes

I just loved comedy as a kid and I think at some point, it just occurred to me that you could try it, and I did.

I think comedy is difficult, and I'm amazed so many people want to do it. I'll be buying jeans and somebody will say, "I'm a comedian" - the guy selling you the jeans. The desire to be a comedian is weird. I found it weird myself to want to be one; I was a schoolboy when I wanted to be one but I didn't know how to do it. That was 50 years ago, so times have changed greatly. There seems to be a long line of people desperate to do it and most of them are quite good.

As a young girl, if you do something funny - especially if you're Jewish - someone says, 'Oh, have you seen Gilda Radner?'

I think being successful in comedy is being funny and making jokes - anything beyond that is the icing on the cake.

Ricky Gervais changed our lives. And Mitch Hedberg, who we're like, "Oh, that's funny to me on a level I don't think I understand. But I'm clearly pleased by it beyond something that my brain's figured out." He was amazing.

Show me one guy or woman as funny as Rodney Dangerfield or as good as George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, or Joan Rivers. There are a lot of good comics out there, no doubt, but as far as the quality of the comics goes, I think what you have is a bunch of situational comics.

Obviously those who burn to be professional jesters mean that they want to be successful comedians. And those are always an elite, microscopic portion of the population. But oh, how they try.

I remember 'Def Comedy Jam' being a big deal and kids talking about it in school, but it was never, 'I want to do that.'

It used to be if you wanted to be a comedian, you used to just do sets. You'd go up three times a night, just get better, and then some people would see you and you'd do 'The Tonight Show,' and then boom, you're a comedian.

When someone can, on a worldwide level, make someone laugh, that's power. A lot my heroes - Eddie Murphy, Will Ferrell, the Wayans, Adam Sandler - they get it. And I've always felt that Andy Samberg is the future of comedy.

There's only going be one Richard Pryor. You know how many came out after Richard Pryor and died trying to be compared to him? Or Bernie Mac? You got to be like you.

I remember before I did my HBO special, Chris [Rock] screamed at me - in a loving way, but still. He was like, "You need to do 200 shows in a row and a month straight on the road before you even think about recording a special!" And I had literally booked two weeks on the road and then went right into the recording. It put me in a panic, but it also made me work harder and made me realize that everyone works differently, and that's okay.

I love comedy and I hope I never stop doing it.

I don't mind personal insults, but when you insult the jokes that I tell you're insulting Fred Allen, Bob Hope, Burns and Allen, Trevor McGee and Molly Picon.

I think I'm not uber into the comedy scene, but I love to laugh, especially in our business, where you're always front and center over an extremely, sometimes overly-critical live audience. I think it helps to laugh.

I think of myself as a comedian who has the pleasure of writing jokes about things that I actually care about, and that's really it. I have great respect for people who are in the front lines and the trenches of trying to enact social change, but I am far lazier than that.

I think with a comedian, when you get to the point of a greatest hits, it's kind of an acknowledgment that you've been doing stand-up a long time, which not very many people do.

I try not to see new comics - their acts or their films. Part of that is professional. I don't want to be influenced. But another part is fear and jealousy. I'm afraid to see how good they might be. I don't like that emotion, but it's part of me.

Comedy started out as my hobby and then it became my profession. It's like being on call all the time, like having a built-in beeper. You can't just leave the office and relax because you never know when you'll think of something funny.

When I first graduated college, I told my parents I'd try to pursue comedy for the first year or two, and if it didn't work out, I'd put my nose to the grindstone and try to find a job somehow. I went to UCB, and it clicked with me.

To succeed in comedy you ultimately have to put in the hours and get lucky - The amount of people who are able to break through is so small a fraction of the amount of people trying.

I'm glad that that era of stand-up is over, because I think it adversely affected a lot of people who could have been really, really great comedians. Because they unconsciously or subconsciously stifled their wild impulses, and were thinking about the five clean minutes for The Tonight Show, or the 20-minute sitcom pitch as a stand-up act.

All that the comedian has to show for his years of work and aggravation is the echo of forgotten laughter.

I like to read, but otherwise I'm just your average, self-obsessed comedian. It's pretty much all I think about.

Stand-up is not something that you're good at right away. You have to do it a ton. But, I think I got to shave a year off because I didn't have to get over stage fright.