Comic Monologue Quotes

I did standup comedy. I opened once for Jay Leno.

Too many comics today ramble. By the time they get to the punch line, the audience has either gone to sleep, gone to the bathroom or gone to bed.

When someone says to me, do you do stand-up I say absolutely not. I like to think of it as a theatrical performance. With me the show changes maybe five to ten percent every night. Of course, whatever I see in front of me and sometimes I get on a little run about it and it changes the show. And my delivery is such that people who have seen me many times say Gee, I never heard that before. Actually, they have, but I might have changed it around.

The hardest thing in the world to depict dramatically is stand-up.

I consider it, the life of being a comedian - they have a right to boo me.

Sometimes, as a comedian, a line will come to you, that is so beautiful, so perfect, that you think: I did not create this line. This line belongs to all of us. Surely this is a line of God.

One of the things I used to dream of is that if I could just be funny like Red Skelton, if I could be a comedian like Red Skelton - that's what I watched on TV - then maybe I would have friends. I just remember that if I told stories to my friends, they listened. And in my family, with nine people talking at the same time, it's really hard to get people to listen to you. We were all craving attention.

Every comic delves into the personal archive when their imagination runs dry.

Is it my end-all and be-all to become a standup comic? No.

When you're doing standup, it's just you. It's your written jokes. You perform it however your personality is.

I'm not a comedian, but I love the comedians who know when to get off the stage.

I've done two Shakespeare tragedies, so I'd desperately like to do comedy. It would be nice not to die.