Top 1200 Stand-Up Comedy Quotes & Sayings - Page 3

When I came to America, it was Dave Chappelle and a lot of comedians on ComicView. That was my first exposure to stand up comedy, actually.

I used to devour a lot of stand-up comedy in my cousin's basement. He had cable and I didn't, so I went there and saw all the comedians.

I have to do stand-up. I have to do something comedy-involved every day, or else I will lose my mind.

My mom and dad are both in stand-up comedy, so that's where I started, that's where I got everything. My roots are holding the mic.

I never shoot for a film telling myself that I have to make people laugh. I can't even do stand-up comedy.

Do it [stand-up comedy] because it feels like the right thing to do. Do it because you don't want to do anything else. There is something in you that does not want you to do anything else other than comedy.

If there's one regret I have of my time in comedy it's that I really I was so obsessed with improv for so many years and I exclusively did improv for the first 6 years or 7 years. I was doing comedy and then I started doing solo work and stand up, a bit of writing, making videos, and really going into it on that end.

London seems to be a town with a lot of comedy fans and people that really enjoy stand-up.

I can do more than just stand-up comedy, and the only way I'll be able to show that is if I do it myself. Because nobody trusts that I can do it.

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.

I do think that stand-up comedy in general heavily favors masculinity and so I like to act a little feminine onstage.

I don't think there's anything more scary than being forced into doing stand-up comedy.

I had been writing and performing stand-up comedy pretty much the entire time I worked at Google.

I had always been heavily influenced by stand-up. I was in a comedy team called Red Johnny And The Round Guy.

Stand-up comedy in the end, unlike the rest of the entertainment industry, is a meritocracy. There's a certain level of undeniability you can work toward.

A lot of stand-up specials for cable are meant to glorify the comedian. They put you in a really beautiful theater, and sometimes they even blow a little smoke in there to make it misty and sweet. They make the guy look like he's a big rock star. But comedy's not really glamorous. It doesn't enhance comedy for it to look good.

Derek Brunson's stand up is horrible, I'm sorry. The guy is a good fighter but his stand up is just terrible. He's an amateur fighter stand up wise.

I have to tell you, it's very boring, but before I did yoga, I was a stand-up comedian who can't stand up. And now I can stand on my head.

No, I never really set out to be a stand up. I wanted to be a writer of some sort. I thought I'd do a bit of stand up and hopefully that will lead to stuff and little did I know it kind of snowballed. Before I knew it I was doing stand up 300 nights a year.

Doing stand-up comedy is in the middle of a traffic jam getting everybody moving again.

I kind of thought that stand-up comedy would suffer from the Internet because people seem to know more about the craft of stand-up than ever before. I thought it would seem trite. Kind of like if you know more about magicians, you wouldn't love them.

As soon as I did my first five minutes of stand-up I knew that I would rather be a failure at comedy than a success in marketing.

I do podcasts for the same reasons I do stand-up comedy. I love it, and I don't care if anybody else gets it.

My life plan was to get into drama school and become an actor, but it took me three years. I applied while I was still at school in my final year, and I didn't get in anywhere, so I took a job in a comedy club - not doing stand-up comedy, because that's my idea of hell, but in the office - and I went traveling.

By the time I got to uni sketch comedy was much more fashionable than stand-up.

The ability to workshop in stand-up comedy is incomparable to any art form, in my opinion.

A lot of people think stand-up comedy is one person performing to an audience, but I love it more when it's a dialogue, an interaction.

I'm not concerned about what [Donald Trump] says about me. That doesn't matter to me. I'm going to stand up for immigrants. I'm going to stand up for American Muslims who are working hard in this country that they love and consider their own. I'm going to stand up for other women. I'm going to stand up for the right to choose.

I did a 'Last Comic Standing' audition in 2006, where you're just performing for three people in a comedy club, in a big comedy club, and I remember them cutting me off, asking about my name in the middle of one of my jokes. Yeah, it's just real weird when you're doing stand-up in that type of sterile, unnatural setting.

About a year after I moved to Los Angeles, I decided I wanted to be a joke writer for a late night talk show. So I met with a late night joke writer and he told me that I should start by doing stand-up comedy, because that would really hone my sense of humor and joke writing ability. Eventually I took a stand-up class and a few months later I had a seven-minute act.

I just like to build. Don't get me wrong: I think stand-up is great, and when someone like Richard Pryor or Steve Martin does stand-up, there's nothing better in the world. But I don't want to watch a lot of stand-ups for two hours. So I can do 45 minutes of stand-up and then say, 'Can we do something else now?'

I've done stand-up at airport Holiday Inns and that's where you feel like you're doing comedy for people that hate it.

I love doing stand-up, and the more you do outside of stand-up to raise your profile, the better your stand-up becomes in terms of the quality of gigs.

The best comedy you can ever have is when you're in the pub with your mates. You can never beat that. That's what I try to recreate in stand-up.

My brother nurtured the love of stand-up comedy in a skinny little black kid named Tony.

I think 'Paper Moon' is a comedy-drama. 'What's Up, Doc?' was the most severe comedy, but my favorite film of my own is 'They All Laughed,' which is a kind of bittersweet comedy.

Stand-up comedy is still a very male-dominated world. You look at a set list and maybe there's one woman on there.

I'm not a comedian. I don't do stand-up. I don't tell jokes. I'm a comedic actor, and approach my work that way. The comedy comes through the character.

I hate being mean. I watch those roasts on Comedy Central and they make the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

Saturday Night Live was a show that I never thought I would be on, because I didn't do sketch comedy and I didn't do impressions. I was a stand-up.

I personally have no interest in being a star or a celebrity. I want my stand-up comedy and how I think as a comedian to be recognized and successful.

I started working full time as a comedian in 2005, shortly after we did the Vince Vaughn 'Wild West Comedy Show.' I worked at the Four Seasons hotel from 1998 to 2005, so about seven years, just trying to put some food on the table and pay the rent while I went out to the open mics and got my feet wet with stand-up comedy.

Stand up comedy is this thing you get to do, so you have to treat it with respect. You can't just be like, 'Alright, I got my hour down, people are coming to see me now. Now, I'm going to lean on the mike stand.' No, you gotta work even harder now. You got to top what you already did. Because they'll find someone else.

I'm more than a little suspicious of humor in poems, because I think it can at times be a way of getting a reaction out of a reader, or an audience, that is something closer to relief: i.e., thank god this isn't poetry, but stand-up comedy. Some poets are really funny, but more often poets are fourth rate stand up comics at best. But they benefit from the sheer relief of the audience.

There's a fallacy with stand up comedy, which is, people come up to comedians, and they go, 'You say what I think but I'm not brave enough to say,' and that's not particularly true.

Anyone who does stand-up comedy can agree that doing a late-night spot is a dream of theirs.

Stand up comedy is an odd way to make a living, one that is regularly tinged with both triumph and despair.

A lot of women do stand-up as a gateway into acting, but I love stand-up, and to be a good stand-up, you have to go on the road a lot. It means going to places in America where they've never seen a Vietnamese person in their life.

I don't think stand-up comedy is becoming too serious, in fact, I wish it was. We are still mostly doing frivolous stuff.

I was not one of those people who wanted to be a comedian when I was growing up. I liked comedy, but didn't know it was something you could do for a living. I actually wanted to be an attorney. I did do things on the side like improv and sketch comedy, but law was my focus. I was a very bookish, academic kid. When I got out of college, I was really unhappy. I had a great job that I should have loved, yet I was miserable. I slowly realized that was because I wasn't performing. So I just tried stand-up and fell in love with it after one performance.

Ultimately, I just decided stand-up comedy is a huge commitment, and if you want to be the best, you have to give it one hundred per cent.

I better start doing stand up comedy in Spanish before every comedian in Mexico translates my jokes.

Phunny Business is a breezy, vivid, funny, star-studded and delightful valentine to comedy, entrepreneurship and the All-American impulse to make something out of nothing. The story of comedy club owner/inveterate dreamer Raymond Lambert and his heroic quest to create a safe, productive place for black stand-up comedians to hone their craft and find their voices isn't just a great Chicago story and a great comedy story: it's a flat-out great story, lovingly and engagingly told.

I go to a lot of stand-up comedy. I find more inspiration from observational stuff than from rap.

I think a lot comes from having the experience of doing stand-up comedy. It allows you to figure out the psychology of an audience; what things are funny and not.

I've been performing stand-up comedy for ten years, it's what I love and will always do.

After graduation, I was floundering in L.A., doing stand-up comedy and working in a shoe store in the Valley.

There's so much you can achieve with a launching pad like stand-up comedy. You can literally go from acting to hosting to being a personality.

If I'm not on tour, I can run down to the comedy club and do a little stand-up. If you're an actor, you can't go - I guess there's forms of it.

I have been lucky enough to work in all kinds of comedy. I prefer working with other people. I could never do stand-up.