Comedy Start Quotes

I began painting well before I started doing comedy. In fact, when I came out of the war in 1946, I enrolled in art school in Dayton, Ohio. I painted for three years, and then show business took hold.

I went to drama school and, after that, went to Paris to train at a place called Ecole Philippe Gaulier. When I came home, I realised I'd have to have a serious stab at it. I didn't have an agent and didn't have the traditional drama school showcase, so I started a comedy group with a couple of friends.

I was in the Air Force and was a boom operator (in-flight refueling). I got my comedy start in the Air Force.

At the age of 11 I did my first open mic show, and it was one of those lightning-bolt moments where I suddenly found what I wanted to do.

'Taxi' made a big difference because it got me into comedy.

I started doing stand-up when I was 16, my junior year in high school. My two friends and I would sit at home watching stand-up. They kept saying I should try it, and so I did.

I started comedy in 2006. I didn't even think it was a thing I could do.

In the mid-1970s, there was this huge boom of stand-up comedy throughout North America. I went to see a show at a club called Yuk-Yuks, in Toronto, and I was just fascinated. I ended up coming back for amateur hour on a Monday at midnight and got up there without any thought as to what might come of it.

When I finished my residency in New Orleans, I went to L.A. where I would work as a doctor during the day, and then at night I would actually go to The Improv and do standup, all the while kind of cultivating my comedy resume.

I got locked into a tradition [at Cambridge] of doing comedy.

I began in radio in 1997 on a radio show hosted by a now very famous comic, Jamel Debbouze. I would fake call listeners.

I was very lucky when I started doing comedy because I hadn't seen much stand-up. I just got up on stage and did it without thinking.

I came out to L.A. in '78 to be a musician. I didn't get into comedy until the mid-Eighties.

I had started in the comedy world in a more traditional way. I was auditioning for TV, film, and commercials while I was making these Web videos from my house.

Well, actually, I did start out in comedies. Very, very early.

I think Night Court was the first thing I did when I came out to Hollywood. It was just one of those things that... I'm from Texas, and it was a character I'd been doing when I was a kid, just for fun.

I knew I wanted to be in comedy but the path of least resistance was doing stand-up in folk music clubs where I could get on stage. I guess you could get up no matter how bad you were and you didn't have to audition. You just got up. Everything else required an audition and if you auditioned for a TV show, you would stand in line with a hundred other people. But at the clubs, it was okay just to get up, so that's why I started in stand-up.

In terms of comedy, I never did five-minute sets or clubs or anything. I just started doing shows. Coming from that theater background, it never crossed my mind that I should start doing five-minute sets.

I grew up watching Letterman, 'Seinfeld,' 'SNL,' and Monty Python movies. But nothing made me want to get into comedy more than when 'Mr. Show' started airing.

I'm from New York, and I started in New York, which I think is a huge advantage because I wasn't overwhelmed by the city. I understood the city. All of the distractions that could come with somebody that started comedy in New York didn't really happen for me.

I started doing my own animated movies when I was in ninth grade; that's when I got the filmmaking bug. When I was about 16, I started writing jokes for doing stand up, and then I was 19 and started doing stand up.

When I started acting, doing theater stuff at a young age, I was always the comic relief-type roles, so I knew I had a funny bone and could make groups of people laugh, but I didn't really take it seriously until I started getting paid on a weekly basis; then I was like, 'Oh, well, this could be a lifestyle.'

I started stand-up in 2007. I'd done a couple of gigs before that, but not much, and I was in a sketch group at Uni from 2005 as well.

I started to develop my comedy skills when I became resident singer at the Boggery Folk Club in Solihull. My career blossomed from there, and I became a big draw on the folk-club circuit.

I started on television. I had five years of network television before I ever got up on a stage. The first thing I ever did was in 1967. This guy Bill Keene had a little talk show at noon, and Gary Owens took over for a week. He knew about this dummy bit I used to do, this ventriloquist thing, and I was on 'Keene at Noon.'