Standup Comedy Quotes

People see a lot of my standup, and that's what I'm known for since I was trained in karate and kickboxing, but I also have ground game.

I'm a standup comedian who gets to act. I'm never going to not do standup. I love doing it and when I go through periods where I'm doing a lot of acting work, I still do standup.

I've skewered whites, blacks, Hispanics, Christians, Jews, Muslims, gays, straights, rednecks, addicts, the elderly, and my wife. As a standup comic, it is my job to make sure the majority of people laugh, and I believe that comedy is the last true form of free speech.

Stand up comedy can be a tough world to break into. It can take years of painful soul searching, disappointing performances, and pounding the pavement day in and day out with very little reward.

I'm living in L.A., which is hard to get around. I live way out in the suburbs, it's hard for me to get to town. You get five minutes here, then you gotta drive a half hour to the next one. New York was so much easier for standup because you could hit five clubs in a night. Just jump in a cab, pop. Boom, boom, boom. And you could walk to some of 'em, and work out stuff on the way. You can really get some more traction out there. You could work new material easier out there, I thought.

I really love standup because it's something that I've been literally doing for 40 years, which means I'm a thousand years old.

I love standup and I haven't given it up.

I think what I do in my acting world and what I do in my standup world is bring up a brand that I want to bring across. Once you figure out your brand and what you do, it's kind of easy at that. You end up getting your audience.

You reach a point when you say to yourself, 'Do I want to keep doing this?' There are other things on my plate I want to do - I've been writing a play; I've been neglecting my standup.

If I could make the same amount of money doing standup it would be no contest. The problem is that if you do make that kind of money doing standup, it's not in clubs, it's in big auditoriums and large venues, and I really think something is lost when you do standup for a big crowd.

I do love standup. I love comedians. They're my community. Also, because I know so many of them, I know the value of them. I know what they can do.

Richard Lewis has this incredible ability to look like he's just... you know it's an act that's been honed. What you have to do in standup is create spontaneity, somehow; even though you've done this act a million times, you gotta look like you're almost just thinking of it now, to make it entertainer.

At the end of the day, I'm not really trying to make a statement with any of my standup.

It's a unique fraternity to be a standup. I think everybody understands, you know, opportunity, and everybody - especially at the top - are genuinely rooting for you.

When I got a part in 'All American Girl,' in 1994, I remember thinking, 'Now I have a series, I'm not going to need to do standup,' but every night I'd go out afterward and get onstage somewhere.

Comedy is a funny thing, and it's really not like any other art form in that it's very specialized and varied in it's content, but generic in it's title. You would never go to a club just to see "Live music," you would go to a jazz club to see jazz, a blues club to see blues, etc. But when you go to see "standup comedy," if you don't know the performers material, you really don't have any idea what you're gonna get.

Everyone was doing alternative comedy. I thought I'd distinguish myself by just telling jokes, with differing degrees of success.

I think standup is pretty good for an introvert because you are performing, but, I mean, it's on your own terms. There are so many people in the room, but it's a one-sided conversation. And you actually don't have to interact - unless you want to.

I only like the live audience. I don't even like to do standup where it's being filmed. Because it affects the way the audience responds to what you say, because it makes them uncomfortable. You have to perform in a light room, and I prefer a dark room. But I love to perform, and I don't really see myself doing any television at all.

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

I did a gig as a standup when I was eight years old. I went on holiday with my family to this holiday camp and they had a talent competition and I entered as a standup.

It's weird because standup can be like therapy. Comedians can't be satisfied with just having fun with our friends. We've got to figure out a way to do it on stage.

I often run teaching down in my standup, but I had some great years, and it's a great job. It represented a place where I knew what I wanted to do but didn't have the courage.

There's no idea or concept in comedy you could do that hasn't been attacked from some angle. But if you start leaving punchlines out so you'll look cool, I don't get that. But I don't watch standup anyway, so I don't know what they're doing.

Growing up, I didn't know anything about comedy and didn't know anything about comedians or what standup was. I grew up in the projects with no dream of anything, it was in my formatting when i got older and started talking to my friends about how I felt, they would be like, "dude, that's funny." Then one day my friend was like, "Dude, you don't understand how funny you are, you need to do standup"!