Christine Baranski Quotes

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

I feel I've always got to keep my stand-up because I never want to lose it.

Stand up is really fun because if I think of a joke or a funny idea, then I can just go and tell some people and if they laugh, they laugh right away.

I'm really good at standup. I always win at standup.

Sometimes I know a joke I'm going to yell out ahead of time, but most of the time it's stream of conscious. You never really know it until you've got everyone dressed up, the set is built, all the extras are here.

You have to do stand-up quite a long time before you learn how to do it well.

I remember going to Bob Preston's dressing room because I was losing a laugh - as you do in a long run. He said, 'Give me the script. That's where you're going off the road.' That's comedy. It's never the line itself; it's in the foundation.

The really good stand up comedians can be angry but relatable, and they have interestingly humanizing personalities. Their observational skills are far greater than mine, so I'll just stick to reading lines off a page.

Actually, I think I'm funnier off-camera.

To be really great, you need to be naturally funny in order to stand out. But you can work at it, and find the best vehicle that you have to communicate what you're saying to people.

Stand-up is hard.

A big part of my love and passion for making music is playing it live.

I like both music and acting, and they both have a lot in common - timing, immediacy, stuff like that. But acting is more regimented. You wait around for hours, you don't get to write the script, you get hired. Music represents me better. I'm not acting; I'm just expressing myself.

Comedy has to be built carefully.

Comedy and music are so similar because it's all about timing.

Comedy's all math, figuring out the timing.

I am still a comic, a fantastic one.

When did I become a fast-talking Jew? As time went on, my bits started to become longer, and that became part of the signature.

If you look up the definition of stand-up comedy, it's funny on purpose. A little bit of pressure there. It's basically acting. You're telling stories and acting them out for people. The more you make it seem real, really a person doing it, then it seems to me the better it works.

One joke coming from one person can land completely flat, while somebody else delivering it in a unique way can really elevate it.

When you are doing comedy, you need to get the right reaction from your partner.

If you want to do standup, you have to go on stage. That's the only way to get good - stage times.

I believe it is tough to be funny and tougher to make people laugh. And it needs to be been done effortlessly. A joke can be comedy, but one can kill the joke if it is delivered badly.

I've always thought stand-up comedians were the oral storytellers of our time, because they know rhetoric, they know delivery, they know timing, they know all of these things that you can only learn by telling a story out loud and interacting with an audience.

A lot of times when I sit down with the other comics and try to talk theory, they say I'm being too serious.