Top 33 Quotes & Sayings by Shelley Berman

I've got these two wonderful people who run my web site and put me on Facebook. They didn't even ask me. I'm very appreciative of it.

As much experience, education and awareness as one can attain is important for a comedian.

My whole act is confession.

I just sit down and write. I never know when. The most recent one is 'Sarah Still,' which is about our life, Sarah and me. It's my favorite of all my poems.

The old problems - love, money, security, status, health, etc. - are still here to plague us or please us.

'Inside' was the second LP album of a comedian's performance before an audience.

So that this thing that aired in 1963 would result a few years later in personal bankruptcy, would result in having people be on edge with me, wondering when I'm going to blow up.

The Steve Allen Sunday night show had the right to two options after my first performance.

Unquestionably, standup comedy is and has always been an art form.

I am careful with my material and presentation.

My first job was at a Chicago night club called Mr. Kelly's.

I am presently in my thirteenth year of teaching a graduate course at the University of Southern California.

I quit smoking well over twenty years ago.

I believe it is important for comedians to know who came before them.

I will always love to perform standup comedy.

I don't know the accident of still being married. I was the worst human being. But we were, I guess, in love. So much has happened to us to bring us together and keep us together.

I am in the Master of Professional Writing program teaching Humor Writing, Literary and Dramatic.

Have a great, great marriage. Have a great time together. You know something? You'll disagree sometimes, and you'll find out how stupid it is, and then you'll be OK. You will.

Though it sold very well, I hated 'The Edge.'

While you're improvising, you may come up with something which will break him up. As soon as that smile comes out, you know that, hey, we're having fun.

I was an actor before becoming a comedian.

'Outside' came in '60. 'The Edge' in '61. All three made Gold, but the biggest seller was 'Inside.'

As a culture I see us as presently deprived of subtleties. The music is loud, the anger is elevated, sex seems lacking in sweetness and privacy.

Incidentally, I'm still looking for acting work, my first love.

The most memorable performance was my appearance in concert in Carnegie Hall. The first standup to do so.

I developed several comedy phone calls.

I heard the other day of a man who paid a psychologist $50 to cure him of an inferiority complex - and later was fined $25 and costs for talking back to a traffic cop.

Though it sold very well, I hated "The Edge."

We teach reading, writing and math by [having students do] them. But we teach democracy by lecture.

Inside was the second LP album of a comedian's performance before an audience.

The most unusual salesman I ever met is a fellow who made a modest fortune purveying lightning rods. But he suddenly lost interest in his work. He got caught in a storm with a bunch of samples in his arms.

A hotel is a place that keeps the manufacturers of 25-watt bulbs in business.

If you've never met a student from the University of Chicago, I'll describe him to you. If you give him a glass of water, he says, 'This is a glass of water. But is it a glass of water? And if it is a glass of water, why is it a glass of water?' And eventually he dies of thirst.