Bill Burr Quotes

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

I think that if you, as a comedian, are trying to be in people's face, then you've got to come up with new stuff every year. We're in a mass consumption phase where people take things for granted and want things to be instant when these are not things that can be instant.

I never go see live comedy shows because I just sit in the audience thinking, "Here's what I would say. Here's what I would do if I got up there." It drives me crazy.

Andy Samberg is the only person I've ever seen do an impression of me, and I didn't think it was that accurate. I'd like to see somebody else impersonate me, especially if they can do a good job.

This is a dream come true. HBO is the highest echelon in the world for a stand-up comedian to attain. Throughout my career I've trusted my instincts to lead me down the right path, and I am honored to work together with this network while contributing to the legacy that is HBO.

Everything I do is intended to make people laugh and think. I just think something is funny, it's not hurting anybody, not stabbing anybody, not shooting anybody, not making anybody watch me perform. There are thousands of comedians, don't come see me because it's not like I hide it.

Comedians rarely have writers, and if you do it's usually a sign of laziness.

When I do comedy, my brain sort of locks up in the infinite possibilities. That's where I get sort of lost. I think, "Oh, there are six other jokes that we could say here!" I feel more at home with drama.

[Adoption] could turn you into an exquisite comedian. Ask Richard Pryor's ghost.

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.

I think both of us [ with Steve Oram], once we decided to do comedy, knew that we would have to come to London to do that.

It is hard to find something where you can go off as much as I do in stand-up, but I think stand-up allows me that freedom where you can really go off and have a good time.

I think comedy is on an organic upsurge right now because when I started, it was 1978 at The Comedy Store and Letterman had just stopped emceeing his morning show.

One of the funniest lines in my show was written for me by Alan Bursky. I really want to learn this routine!

Speaking for myself, I try to go out there on the stage and make jokes with people, so I'm not really thinking about the impact anything I have. If it does resonate with people, that's really great.

Nobody really wants to be a stand-up, they want to get on TV.

I have to make good things so good comedians want to talk to me.

I did get good enough to get on HBO's Young Comedians Special, but I certainly wasn't the person who got launched off of HBO's Young Comedians Special. That would be Ray Romano that year. I had some semi-intelligent jokes, but when people would see me, they would think, "Oh, that's a good writer." No one would ever have said, "Oh, that's a good performer."

I feel like you can share as many jokes as you want to because no joke you do on Twitter is ever gonna be so big on Twitter, for the most part, that you can't say it on stage that same night.

I get to do stand-up every single day. I love that live energy exchange between the audience and myself, and to get to say the things I want to say and comment on.

Not all comedy clubs or situations are ideal, especially when you're first coming up and I think that's good for you. Eventually you get to express your real personality.

I really wanted to, but I just didn't understand how people became comedians. I kind of thought it was something you were born into. And so I wanted to be a veterinarian or an architect. I wanted to be in a band, and for some reason I could understand how you could be in a band because I had guitars and all my friends played music. Comedy was a secret want, but it wasn't anything I pursued.

If you're gonna tell a story from beginning to end, I always think you have to have a great structure in a script. If it gets you excited and it's something you've never read before that's another plus. I think also with improv and that whole world of stand-up, that's a whole other organism of comedy that still needs a story, but it's more free-form. On the set, it is the combination of both those worlds coming together: a great script and an allowance to play with it.

With stand-up, you can be as freeform as you want to be. You can say what you want, how you want, at any moment without constraint.

I often think it can often be very difficult for comedians to revisit the same gag. I think Russell's a bit more than a comedian.