Top 100 Quotes About Stand Up Comedy
#1. I've seen stand up comedy, and after a while you start to notice that a lot of people are doing things that are like a lot of other people. There can be a bit of a herd mentality, and that's obviously less interesting because there's less going on. I'm just being totally frank with you.
Dylan Moran
#2. Have four things going. I have stand-up comedy, two television shows and I'm working on a play. I like to work, and I fear that something could fall through. You know what they say: 'The show must go off.'
Joy Behar
#3. If you are doing stand-up comedy, you have to be confident in what you are doing. That doesn't mean just because you are confident you are funny.
Judah Friedlander
#4. Stand-up comedy and comedy in general is the ultimate form of free speech, because you get to poke holes in all the pretentious bubbles politicians and pundits and popes and pretenders try to float over our heads.
Denis Leary
#5. I do think that stand-up comedy in general heavily favors masculinity and so I like to act a little feminine onstage.
Bo Burnham
#6. New York State is giant and has some of the most beautiful landscape on the Eastern seaboard. There is so much history in New York State, from the Erie Canal to the Catskills, the birth of American stand-up comedy.
Adam Savage
#7. I'm going to try really hard not to be bossy, but I've only done stand-up comedy and then my own show where you're the total boss of everything!
Rosie O'Donnell
#8. I'm not a comedian, I'm not a stand-up and I don't come from a comedy background. I am an actor, but I've had a very fortunate foray into comedy, and it seems to have become a bit of a strength, and you can't complain when you become known for something.
Darren Boyd
#9. Comedy doesn't really matter that much; I know that. I treat it like an adult - I don't treat it like a child or a god, which some people do. This might just be in America, but 'stand-up comedy' is something very particular that I don't particularly relate to.
Bo Burnham
#10. I did stand-up comedy for 18 years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four years were spent in wild success. I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a byproduct. The course was more plodding than heroic.
Steve Martin
#11. You know, stand-up comedy is where I pretty much started out.
Brion James
#12. I was doing stand-up at a restaurant and there was a chalkboard on the street out front. It said, Soup of the Day: Cream of Asparagus. Ellen DeGeneres.
Ellen DeGeneres
#13. People need to write articles and they need to have angles in them and I'm grateful when people are doing articles, but I always say there's not a great mystery to stand-up comedy.
Jim Gaffigan
#14. 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.
Phoebe Fox
#15. The two things I understand best are stand-up comedy and martial arts. And those things require an ultimate grasp of the truth. You have to be objective about your skills and abilities to compete in both.
Joe Rogan
#16. I just want to kind of tackle every kind of form that exists in the comedy world; whether it be stand-up or hidden camera or parody. Kind of slap it in a movie with hip-hop artists and actors, comedians and girls. I just want to do something fun.
Pauly Shore
#17. My sense of stand up comedy would be so esoteric.
Paul Rudd
#18. But long story short, I didn't start doing stand-up because I wanted to have a TV show or be an actor or even wanted to write sketch comedy. I got into stand-up because I love stand-up.
Demetri Martin
#19. In terms of a comedy plan I don't really have a list of what I want accomplish. I'm just riding the wave! I think I will always come back to stand-up and comedy in all its forms. I just don't think it will ever be the one sole thing I do.
Doc Brown
#20. Anytime there's a bad female stand-up somewhere, some dickhead Interblogger will deduce that "women aren't funny." Using that same math, I can state: Male comedy writers piss in cups.
Tina Fey
#21. 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.
Chris Hardwick
#22. As far as just my stand-up is concerned, I don't care about changing anyone's mind. I'm not making an argument. I'm a guy doing comedy.
David Cross
#23. I eventually became an actor, starting with doing stand-up comedy in New York and then theater wherever they would let me. Finally, I moved out here to Los Angeles and got on a show.
Nolan North
#24. Kevin Hart. He's the man! I like his style. He's short, so I can relate. All the stories he tells are real. I respect that, and he's just a really funny dude - great comedy instincts. To do stand-up on a stage for an hour and tell stories and make people laugh is incredible.
Cameron Boyce
#25. I moved from acting to stand-up because castings are just about what you look like. It doesn't matter if you can act or not. In comedy, no one cares what you look like.
Mark Billingham
#26. No small part of the club's audience consisted of would-be comics, as well as the leading comics of the day. In fact, there were so many gagsters around that it was difficult to know who was part of the act and who was just sitting in.
Kliph Nesteroff
#27. I do films which get me out of my comedian routine so that I don't get bored being a stand-up comedian. And with films, it's here today, gone tomorrow. So stand-up comedy is here to stay for me.
Vir Das
#28. One of the biggest misconceptions about me is that I'm a comedian, which I'm not. A comedian is someone who can stand up in front of an audience and make you laugh. I've never done stand-up and I never will. I'm a comic actor. My comedy comes through my characters.
Eugene Levy
#29. Regardless of what I do, whether I write a book or whether I act or whether I host, I'll always do stand-up comedy because those moments, that's what I crave. If I do something funny, and I hear a crowd laugh in that moment, we're all sharing the exact same experience and the exact same feeling.
Howie Mandel
#30. You know, it wasn't even that I'm a funny guy, I just loved stand-up comedy and I wanted to do it. It was one of the few things in my life that I knew I was going to be able to do, and I also felt as though I'd be able to do it the way I wanted to do it.
Bill Burr
#31. 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.
Dane Cook
#32. After doing comedy for a while and knowing how hard it is to do physical comedy right, I learned how incredibly talented the Three Stooges really were after re-watching old episodes. They still stand up!
Carly Craig
#33. Stand-up comedy is like the lowest medium in all of show business in levels of respect.
Chris Rock
#35. Georgia was a great place to live, but I wanted to get out because I knew the opportunities for what I was doing - stand-up comedy and eventually acting - were in Los Angeles.
Chris Tucker
#36. It seems to me that they only seem to mention things in the Bible that are within a 5 mile radius of the guy writing it.
Jim Jefferies
#37. I think it's nice if someone respects whatever their endeavor is, whether it's dance or art or stand-up comedy, to not assume that they're gonna be an overnight sensation, that it's this great craft that takes a lot of hard work to get good at.
Adrian Tomine
#38. When I was in improv workshops or doing stand-up or writing comedy with others, or just doing comedy, I just laughed. Funny was funny; I loved to laugh. I always liked people I found generally funny.
Michael Keaton
#39. When I was 14, I told my mother I was going to drop out of high school and go do stand-up comedy. All she said was 'Oh maybe it's better if you just die,' because it was killing her that I was doing this.
Margaret Cho
#41. When you're a stand-up, you play in front of 600 people, and it's all about timing. I could never do stand-up comedy; it would be way too hard for me.
Dean Norris
#42. Stand-up comedy is an art form and it dies unless you expand it.
Sam Kinison
#43. I never wanted to be a model. I never wanted to be a serious actress. I started off doing comedy. I did a stand-up comedy camp at the Laugh Factory, and I started out on Nickelodeon.
Amanda Bynes
#45. I keep my stand-up comedy notes in a pile on my desk. I don't organize my act. I keep myself in a state of confusion. It stresses me out, but I prefer creative chaos.
Joy Behar
#46. Of all the awards, the Stand-up Comic Audience Award is our favorite. It is a chance to honor the performers who spend much of their careers developing their craft and working in the comedy clubs all over America.
George Schlatter
#47. I have a work-out regime; I am not a maniac. It sounds cliche, but stand-up comedy, doing a one-man show, helps keep me young, and yes, it is exhausting, but I don't collapse.
Robert Klein
#48. I'm lucky enough to have two different platforms to perform on - I do stand-up comedy, and I have 'SNL.' That's where I make my most controversial statements because I can explain myself and I'm in control of the microphone, as opposed to Twitter, where it's in the hands of the reader.
Michael Che
#49. Stand-up comedy is the most relaxing thing I do. If I want to unwind and de-stress, I go out and do stand-up, often several shows in a night.
Judah Friedlander
#50. I really don't want to do anything that resembles stand-up comedy. But I will agree to say that I am doing it, and I will hope that people expect it to be that, so I can thwart those expectations.
Lucas Neff
#51. 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.
Kevin Hart
#52. What Jews do you know who don't make comedy of their lives? It's part of the religion. I'll bet you think all that Hebrew at bar mitzvahs is prayers, don't you? Fooled you, didn't we? It's stand-up.
Jennifer Coburn
#53. 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.
Jim Gaffigan
#54. The only reason I got into stand-up was because my brother told me to. I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. I was 17 and my brother went to a comedy club and he said - you can do that.
Adam Sandler
#55. Stand-up comedy is a very hard thing on the spirit. There are people who transcend it, like Jack Benny and Steve Martin, but in its essence, it's soul-destroying. It tends to turn people into control freaks.
Mike Nichols
#56. The thing about stand-ups is you can't really get good unless you're failing in front of a large number of people. That makes stand-up comedy unique: you need a tremendous amount of reserve within you to take the rejection from the audience, and without it, you can't do anything.
David Steinberg
#57. I think that people who do enjoy my stand-up comedy and the people who get it and the people who are taken in by it, they see that I'm a guy that has love of the game.
Dane Cook
#58. Improv seemed to replace stand-up, which was very big before that. Stand-up comedy was real hot in the late '80s and through the '90s.
Joe Flaherty
#59. Jason [Nash] is just someone that I've known socially and through his stand-up, seeing him do different comedy shows, and I just really like him. I think he's a funny guy and he has a unique perspective on being a dad and a husband.
Busy Philipps
#60. I started doing stand-up at the age of 20. This was back in 1976, around the time (coincidence?) that the first comedy clubs were starting. The young comedians of today gasp when I tell them how many shows I did that first year: 500. Five nights a week.
Emo Philips
#61. I went from an unemployed actor's life to doing stand-up comedy, and that was fortuitous. It's not the usual way the crow flies, going from being in a TV sketch show to playing one of Shakespeare's finest characters, but, hey, that's the way it has happened.
Catherine Tate
#62. 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.
Keenen Ivory Wayans
#63. I had always been heavily influenced by stand-up. I was in a comedy team called Red Johnny And The Round Guy.
John DiMaggio
#64. 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.
Eugene Levy
#65. A lot of stand-up comedy guys, when they get a little famous, just give up their stand-up career, and it cancels out the thing that set them apart.
Johnny Knoxville
#66. I'm a stand-up comic. Anything else I do besides that is a plus, but stand-up comedy is what I do, it's what I've been doing and it's what I'm going to keep doing.
Dave Attell
#67. Frank Fay turned into the most consistent stand-up comic of the late 1920s and essentially changed the art form. Crowds and critics eventually came to accept a man standing alone, cracking wise. No longer did Fay bill himself as a 'Nut Monologist.
Kliph Nesteroff
#68. When I came on the scene, there was The Nualas, who were doing character comedy, but there weren't any other women doing stand-up because Michelle Read had gone more into theatre.
Deirdre O'Kane
#69. 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.
Deirdre O'Kane
#70. 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.
Kevin Nealon
#71. Those of you who are not aware of my brilliant career as a stand up comic, I'm not aware of it either so we might well wonder what we're doing here.
Alan Rickman
#72. I usually have sex to my stand-up comedy album. Power move.
Jeff Ross
#73. For me, the way I stay consistent is through stand-up comedy.
Kevin Hart
#74. As a stand up, and often in acting, there is no place for the most intense feelings. Rage, genuine sorrow, naked hope ... These things don't fit on a comedy stage and if you act you'll get to express them once in a while. Music is a place for the intensely personal.
Hal Sparks
#75. I am very proud of what 'Johnny' achieved in stand-up comedy because he believed entirely in giving an audience the best kick he could. But he was someone who was quite detrimental to my health, both emotionally and physically.
Johnny Vegas
#76. Stand-up comedy is all you. It's your show, it's your game. You control every aspect of it - of that experience and that expression. There's really nothing quite as satisfying.
Bryan Callen
#77. With stand-up, there's a little bit of an exaggerated reality because things have to be manipulated to create comedy, to create jokes.
Chris Hardwick
#78. I just liked stand-up comedy so much. I used to memorize Bill Cosby albums and other people's albums, George Carlin, Flip Wilson.
Drew Carey
#79. I don't like doing things by halves, and I realised you can't do stand-up comedy part-time.
Deirdre O'Kane
#80. It's weird with stand-up comedy. It doesn't really translate worldwide. I want to figure out how do I make it worldwide. Do a special in Africa. Can't beat that. Pull that off, then I will have done something.
Chris Rock
#81. 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.
Jerry Seinfeld
#82. All of comedy at some level is trial-and-error, whether it's a stand-up trying out jokes or a comedy show trying stories.
Michael Schur
#83. When you are doing stand-up comedy, you are the writer, producer, director, sometimes bouncer.
Dane Cook
#84. On the theft of his material by Denis Leary: I have a scoop for you. I stole his act. I camouflaged it with punchlines, and to really throw people off, I did it before he did.
Bill Hicks
#85. I've been pitching a show of five female stand-up comedians through the generations, from Phyllis Diller to Amy Schumer, so when I got an e-mail asking me if I would participate in the Women in Comedy Festival, I was thrilled.
Wendy Liebman
#86. People expect comedy from me but I am not just a stand-up comedian anymore. I act on stage, host 'Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa' and also conduct interviews on my show. I have grown as a person and an artiste.
Kapil Sharma
#87. One night while Joan Rivers was bombing at the Duplex in the Village, Lenny Bruce walked in and caught her act. He sent a note backstage: 'You're right and they're wrong.
Kliph Nesteroff
#88. When I hit my 20s, I struggled to make it. I got married at 19, and my daughter, Je'Niece, was born a year later. I worked blue collar jobs during the day and comedy clubs at night, and I was earning about $25 a year doing stand-up.
Bernie Mac
#89. I love comedy. I don't approach it any different. I'm not a comedian. I'm not a stand-up. I just do it like a part and personally, I love to watch comedies. If you don't get to do what you like to watch you get frustrated.
Uma Thurman
#90. Stand-up is not just an American thing anymore. It's global. In some places, stand-up comedy is brand new. South Africa has only had a scene for 15 years.
Gabriel Iglesias
#91. Real comedy can't be learned; it comes from a need for justice. The best who stand up, stand up for something.
Elayne Boosler
#92. Frank Fay [...] became renowned as the first of the great comic emcees - and in many minds the first stand-up comedian.
Kliph Nesteroff
#93. I just love entertaining. I will do anything - stand-up comedy, video games, fencing, internet shorts - I just want to keep being lucky enough to entertain people anyway I can. I try never to limit my art to a medium.
Matthew Gray Gubler
#94. Stand-up comedy - I love this job, and I gotta tell you, folks - knock wood - it's been working. 'Cause I was one of those kind of people, even when I had a regular job, I couldn't even call in sick right. You know, I was like, 'Hello? Yeah, I can't come in today. I have scurvy.
Carol Leifer
#95. I am trying to work out what my taste is, comedy-wise. I look up to stand up comedians who appear to be telling the truth, but I don't mind if they are lying.
Jessie Cave
#96. When I first started doing my stand-up act, I played the banjo, did comedy, magic tricks, juggled, read poetry. I stuck it all in. I didn't know you were supposed to just stand up and tell jokes. Essentially, that's what my act became: those five elements - except I dropped the poetry.
Steve Martin
#97. When it comes to English stand-up comedy, Indians have only seen the best - Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Cosby and the like. So, when someone claims to be an English stand-up comedian in India, he'd better be very good if he's going to make a life of it.
Vir Das
#98. I think of a lot of comedy being watched alone, for some reason. It's surprising to me that people are getting together to watch stand-up comedy.
Gary Gulman
#99. After graduation, I was floundering in L.A., doing stand-up comedy and working in a shoe store in the Valley.
Kevin Spacey
#100. Let me tell you about gays in the military. I don't want any gay people hanging around me while I'm killing kids. I just don't want to see it.
Bill Hicks
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