Comedian Experience Quotes

My real name is Joseph Herbert. My dad is white; my mom's Asian, Filipino. And when I started stand-up 22 years ago, I used to go up as Joseph Herbert, and I would just have to defend my name. Every time I went onstage, it was so annoying. People would heckle.

I did so many open mics. I would write jokes on Twitter constantly, and then slowly, over time, open mics turned into shows. If you can get a joke to work at an open mic, it's a good joke.

There's a lot of people out there who didn't like my style of comedy.

I was a standup comic, which doesn't necessarily mean you interact with people all that much. In fact when I did shows, I wouldn't talk to the audience very much. Then my friend offered me a radio show, and I thought, you know, I'll try talking to people and see what kind of interviewer I was.

If I ever interview somebody, I make sure I listen to them. As a comedian, I've gone on so many shows, I've wanted to take things to a crazy place. Sometimes the hosts don't like that.

As you get older as a comedian and keep doing it, what you actually start to cherish on stage is not the build-up to the jokes, but how comfortable you can be in the silence and the non-laughing parts, and how long you can take the audience without a laugh to then get a huge reaction.

When you're a comic doing a special, it's like you're directing your first movie.

Hopefully the only things off-limits are crummy jokes, but being a standup comedian, I know that's not always the case... You know it when you have to take a shower afterward.

I don't know how I've managed to reach the age of 45 as a professional comedian and not watched more 'Simpsons,' considering everyone says it's one of the best shows ever.

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've never tweeted. 'Funny or Die' started my Twitter account for me, and so I don't even have the password or anything like that. They started it, then they handed it off to other comics.

I'd done an Edinburgh show before, in 1981, called 'The Importance of Being Varnished' - I was in the pun trade at the time.

My first paid job was delivering newspapers. The first paid acting job I got was dressing up as Edam cheese and handing out leaflets on London's Oxford Street. I got pushed over by these little herberts and given a good shoe-in.

I didn't audition for 'SNL.' I sent in a tape to 'SNL' the year before I started writing there, but I got the job there through doing stand-up on Fallon.

I used to do much shorter jokes a lot more.

I'm just getting my sea legs. The first time you make them laugh, you're like, 'Oh my God - that just happened.' Then you're like, 'I made them laugh. I've earned this.'

I never got nervous performing my own material.

As a kid, I remember wearing a checkered suit and appearing on-stage in the routines worked out by the 'baggy pants' comedians.

When I was studying comedy in Chicago, it wasn't long after 9/11. There were a lot Middle Eastern comedians who were doing bits about hailing cabs and being terrorists. So the first two years, I didn't do any of that because I wanted to separate myself from those guys. But race is a big part of who I am, and it should be a big part of my comedy.

When I come out to do my stand-up set, I pretty much get bombarded with lines from movies. You try to play off it a little bit, but that's what people want to see. Some clubs, the drunker the audience gets, the more they heckle.

As far as stand-up comedy, I got into the business later than most, yeah.

I had done about 60 television shows, from 'Ed Sullivan' to 'The Hollywood Palace,' before I ever went to 'Johnny Carson.' At the time, that was the showcase for comics. And I couldn't believe it.

Before I was a comedian, I thought the coolest thing that would happen to me was being a teenager... Boy, was I wrong!

People said to me, "You know, when you record a special, you're going to regret it. The one thing you'll regret because you're a comic is you'll think of better tags."

I've been called a race traitor, prejudiced about white people. It's ridiculous... I have a really, really diverse crowd. Most comedy clubs appeal to white audiences. I have a very mixed crowd. I have a lot of visibility in the black audience.