Top 100 Quotes About Standup
#1. I was a standup comic, which doesn't necessarily mean you interact with people all that much. In fact when I did shows, I wouldn't talk to the audience very much. Then my friend offered me a radio show, and I thought, you know, I'll try talking to people and see what kind of interviewer I was.
Scott Aukerman
#2. I even get tired performing standup, which is normally a low-impact exercise in futility but looks hard the way I do it. That's why I take a lot of breaks, often stopping in the middle of a joke to catch my breath, or blame the crowd for not laughing before the punchline.
Andy Kindler
#3. For me, standup will always be some part of my life, and other things will move around and find their place.
J. B. Smoove
#4. I really never had any ambitions to be a standup comic. I was talked into it by guys that I used to work out with.
Joe Rogan
#6. I had a great time on News Radio, I got to make tons of money in relative obscurity and learn a lot about the TV biz and work on my standup act constantly. It was a dream gig.
Joe Rogan
#7. I remember my first standup act when I was seventeen; I did a really lame song about being flat chested. I was doing it in New York, and I remember Kevin Brennan, the guy I lost my virginity to, was like "That song doesn't make sense, you have tits."
Sarah Silverman
#8. I don't have a specific plan except for as long as people want to listen to me talk, I'm going to keep talking. I can't imagine a life without doing standup.
Ron White
#9. At CBS, I'm in your house. I'm mindful of that. When I do standup, you're in my home and I can say what I want to.
Craig Ferguson
#10. Is he seriously joking with me? The master of the dark art of raising the dead has become a standup comedian? Surely this is the end of the world.
David Estes
#11. I love doing different things where, for a little while, I can focus on standup then sketch writing, then performing, then directing a video. That, to me, is stimulating.
Kyle Dunnigan
#12. When I finished my residency in New Orleans, I went to L.A. where I would work as a doctor during the day, and then at night I would actually go to The Improv and do standup, all the while kind of cultivating my comedy resume.
Ken Jeong
#13. 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.
Bill Burr
#14. Tracy Ullman, I grew up watching her shows and standup and improv and specials. Bette Midler and Whoopi Goldberg. They inspire me to do it all. I always wanted to do it all; I never wanted to be put in a box.
Bresha Webb
#15. My father told me when I first started that standup is exciting and I should pursue it, but that writing would be the thing that would give me power over my career. I never have to take a road gig or a writing gig I don't want because I always have the ability to play one against the other.
Greg Fitzsimmons
#16. I started doing standup when I was in college, and I would incorporate a lot of characters into my act.
Roger Craig Smith
#17. I enjoy writing the same way I enjoy doing standup. Part of the challenge is being creative and making it work no matter what the constraints.
Greg Fitzsimmons
#18. To say it very honestly, removed from ego, standup is just a thing that I understood, a God-given ability.
Jerrod Carmichael
#19. 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.
J. B. Smoove
#20. Standup is more me talking the entire time. There's definitely an exchange of energy because that room, that audience, is giving back.
Ellen DeGeneres
#21. Standup is tough; if you are going through a hard period in your life, it is very hard to get up in front of people and be the happy guy in the room.
Doc Brown
#22. I think my one of my strengths in standup is my ability to adlib. I do all my best writing on stage. I can sit down and write jokes, but I'd rather go on stage with a premise or an idea and let the jokes come that way. My creative juices are never flowing any better than when I'm onstage.
Henry Cho
#23. But I also know in standup, there's nowhere to hide. You get on stage and you deliver, or you are eviscerated and you are thrown into a pile of bodies at the bottom of a mountain.
Rob Delaney
#24. I wouldn't call myself a standup in the presence of Jerry Seinfeld or Chris Rock, but I do my share of it and it has been and remains part of my activity and I like it.
Alan Thicke
#25. I don't enjoy writing newspaper articles any more than people like reading them. I'm a standup comic, not a journalist, although sometimes onstage I will say: 'What else is in the news?' Writing is work, which I'm not comfortable with.
Andy Kindler
#26. In the early days I was on the road 45-50 weeks a year, driving from gig to gig 6-8 weeks in a row. Not everyone can do that. The show becomes the easy part. Tt's the life on the road that is the hardest ... and you can't get any good at standup unless you do the road.
Henry Cho
#27. I love standup, but not the grind of traveling and dealing with club owners.
Judy Gold
#28. I have yet to see one of those Comedy Central shows with multiple standup comics that doesn't include someone the size of the Hindenburg.
Dick Cavett
#29. I think as a standup performer you have to feel the audience. So the audience kind of dictates what they get, you know?
Pauly Shore
#30. Performing music is a way to do comedy, but without the obligation to do a solid hour, hour and half of a standup. I could intersperse it with music, so it became a really good format for me.
Steve Martin
#31. 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.
Joe Rogan
#32. I just like doing standup, that's all I'm interested in or good at.
Norm MacDonald
#34. 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.
Artie Lange
#35. I did standup while still working for Johnny Carson in the mid-'60s, thus gaining the advantage of at least getting laughs from him about how I hadn't the night before.
Dick Cavett
#36. I'd love to have a shitty job. I couldn't hold any down. Standup was the only thing I could stick with. I'm an idiot that way.
Louis C.K.
#37. I love standup and I haven't given it up.
Ray Romano
#38. I always thought that if I got no love at all early in my standup career, or I was god awful, I thought I'd get into psychology.
Dane Cook
#39. I don't have the desire to be the best standup in the UK but I do have the desire to be the best at everything else I do in terms of writing and acting.
Doc Brown
#40. A weird sort of awareness set in, like, 'Wow. My standup isn't just separate from everything else I do anymore.' With Twitter and Face book, everything is universal that everything everybody says gets seen.
Colin Quinn
#41. 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.
Judy Gold
#42. The person who is most a part of me is the performer, is the standup, the guy who says, "Hey look at me, listen to this!" I do that because that's what I do, I love doing it.
George Carlin
#43. I had more material on weather than anyone else, I guess, ... back when I was traveling a lot on the road as a standup comic, between airport security and the weather ... I just wanted to be prepared for sitting in the airport.
Lewis Black
#44. It may have lost its special-ness forever and the clubs might not being doing well but I think standup is in the best shape it has been in a long time.
Marc Maron
#45. I don't want to be a spokesman for family values, but that's the way my standup is perceived.
Ray Romano
#46. Is it my end-all and be-all to become a standup comic? No.
Jason Alexander
#47. When you're a standup comic, you get up and you try stuff, and you're always kind of seeing how far you can push things.
Aasif Mandvi
#48. I come to Maui and go surfing, standup paddling, slacklining, swimming, and free-diving.
Julia Mancuso
#49. Metal is easily my favorite thing - Exodus and Anthrax and Megadeth - so it just kind of organically came through in the standup act.
Brian Posehn
#50. The worst years of my life were the first two years I was doing standup. You're learning how to do, and you're going on stage in front of two drunks and people aren't laughing and you're broke. That's a really hard time in your life.
Bill Maher
#51. In your search for a rich or wealthy man to complete you, standup to the challenges of deserving a right man, and what you will have in the end is a well-rounded partner.
Darmie Orem
#52. People keep referring to me as a standup, and that just doesn't sit well with me because a lot of my friends are standups and they're brilliant at writing jokes, and I'm not.
Nick Offerman
#53. When I go into schools to speak, I am not giving a speech - it's really a one-man show. I call it 'didactic standup.'
Bruce Coville
#54. I'm fascinated by mankind. I grew up watching 'Candid Camera' and thought it was funnier than any standup, any joke, anything that could possibly be written because you're dealing with humanity. And people can relate to that. It touches everybody who sees it. It hits a nerve.
Howie Mandel
#55. My standup has always been a direct reflection of my life. When I was single, I talked about single stuff. I talked about dating. When I got married there were only a handful of stories I could move over to where I wasn't going to be disrespectful to my wife. So I developed a new routine.
Henry Cho
#56. You really have to be ambitious and have that drive to really become well known and successful as a standup.
Kevin Nealon
#57. Over the years, I've realized that I have as much in common with the performance artist, the standup comedian, the screenwriter, as I do with the theologian. I'm in an odd world where I make things and share them with people.
Rob Bell
#58. I remember writing standup jokes without having done sets. But as soon as I did my first set, it didn't matter. Everything I thought would work didn't work. And everything I was iffy on was funny.
John Mulaney
#59. When I started doing standup when I was 17, I was talking about being Indian and specifically ethnic jokes. Straightforward stuff that was fairly ignorant that I knew would get the laugh. It wasn't flipping stereotypes; it was using them.
Hari Kondabolu
#60. When I became a standup comic, my hero, one of them, was Richard Pryor, and you know, I think that comedians, like, comedians talk about hacks, and what a hack is, is someone who does stuff that's not original.
Artie Lange
#61. I do standup every week in L.A. at the Laugh Factory and the Improv.
Brian Dunkleman
#62. I'm a singer and performer in a hybrid show that's standup, music and audience participation.
Jason Alexander
#63. People don't realize, or maybe they've forgotten, that there was a time in history when standup comedy wasn't something that you had to hide your kids' ears from.
Brad Stine
#64. I'm not a standup. I don't really have jokes. I don't have 10 minutes. It took a while for me to realize this.
Julia Sweeney
#65. Practicing your craft in expert fashion is noble, honorable and satisfying. And I'll generally take a standup mercenary who takes pride in his professionalism over an artist any day.
Anthony Bourdain
#66. You know, when you do standup there are certain requirements that you have to do like you have to go on stage and when you get introduced you have to say "Hey,how ya doin'? How are ya?" I couldn't do it. It was false.
Larry David
#67. They shouldn't call anything a boot camp unless you're going off to war. Standup boot camp has been a fantastic thing, for the people putting it on. They keep you out in the woods and won't let you come back until you're funny. Lenny Bruce came up with his Religions Inc. bit on a day hike.
Andy Kindler
#68. Unquestionably, standup comedy is and has always been an art form.
Shelley Berman
#69. It [live performance] is just very difficult. Doing an hour, hour and a half of live standup is an endurance test. You almost have to do it every day to stay up on it.
Steve Martin
#70. I think expressing yourself and working hard can't help but have great results. Look at Zach Galifanakis. He didn't tweet. He didn't have a podcast. He just went out and did the funniest standup you'll ever see in your life. And he was rewarded for that.
Scott Aukerman
#72. 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.
Joy Behar
#73. In my standup work, I always do these characters, older people who are just off to the side. It's easier to write a story about the guy who made it to the top, but the middle is so much more interesting, so much more murky.
Billy Crystal
#74. I don't write my standup on paper or anything; but I just organically do it on stage, have an idea, chat it up a little bit. I'm keeping notes. I'm trying to keep up with this world and try to bring out a special every year.
Jim Jefferies
#75. I'm really good at standup. I always win at standup.
Leslie Jones
#76. Hopefully the only things off-limits are crummy jokes, but being a standup comedian, I know that's not always the case ... You know it when you have to take a shower afterward.
Jon Stewart
#77. When you're doing standup you're kind of doing, 'Hey. I thought of this. This may be funny.'
Zach Galifianakis
#78. I will stay in the car until the last minute that I'm going to jump out and do a standup or jump out and do some interviews.
Martha Raddatz
#79. I know now for a fact that improv can't hold a candle to doing standup. It's not the same buzz, it just isn't. It feels infantile to me at times. When you see guys who do it really well, great. But improv needs a rewrite.
Ron James
#80. You've got to believe you can be a standup before you can be a standup. You have to believe you can act before you can act. You have to believe you can be an astronaut before you can be an astronaut. You've got to believe.
Eddie Izzard
#81. I think that standup has always been an acquired taste and there was always only a handful of performers that were really inspired.
Marc Maron
#84. People sometimes say how standup is so hard, and I always tell them that it's hard at the beginning.
Bill Maher
#85. I'd like to go back to standup. I don't like to think I've done my last gig. At the moment it terrifies me, I get really nervous. It's a great buzz when it goes well.
Mackenzie Crook
#86. Unlike 'Deal or No Deal,' which is for the entire family, my standup is not for the entire family.
Howie Mandel
#87. Louis C. K. is one of my all time favorite standup comedians.
Aubrey Plaza
#88. Standup comedy is fun. I mean other than having to experience the excruciating lonlieness and unacknowledged sadness that results in funny.
Dov Davidoff
#89. Life has typhoons. They come and turn everything upside down. But you still have to standup because the next storm may be around the corner.
Nadia Hashimi
#90. I get burned out on standup. But I like acting. I do like it. But sometimes you just feel like a monkey. You just feel like a complete tool. But I like it. I do like it. Stand-up is just more free. A lot more freedom because you just do what you want to do.
Zach Galifianakis
#91. I am happy doing standup so I don't ever want to stop doing it. But I wouldn't mind venturing off and doing other things that are creative.
Brian Regan
#92. The most memorable performance was my appearance in concert in Carnegie Hall. The first standup to do so.
Shelley Berman
#93. I think there's a percentage [of the audience] that don't realize, that don't know that [standup] is how everything began. We planned it, we work hard, rehearsals to get this. It's more of a ... it's not just coming in there in a T-shirt and holding a microphone.
Tim Allen
#94. As a standup performer, I'm onstage, and it's important how the audience is looking at me. I'm looking at whether they're leaning forward or not, those types of things. You read an energy. And it's the same thing in a scene with other actors.
Jerrod Carmichael
#95. I'm a comedy geek so anything comedy related, whether that's standup shows, improv shows, I'm all over that. That's my favorite way to be entertained always.
Rashida Jones
#97. When I was doing standup, I always wanted to get out of the standup world and take it back into the theatrical world, like with 'No Cure For Cancer.'
Denis Leary
#98. I never really saw myself as a standup comedian. I always just thought of myself as someone who used the eight minutes or 10 minutes she was allotted and had a blast.
Kristen Schaal
#99. The demand for standup in the eighties was created by how easy it was to exploit 'comedians' and create very cheap television programming.
Marc Maron
#100. There's this other world where all comedians want to do is make funny videos. Typically what's happened in the past is that a comedian gets a standup career and over the course of 20 years builds it up to the point where Comedy Central gives them a sketch show.
Gavin McInnes
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