Stand Up Comic Quotes

#1. I don't consider myself a stand-up comedian. I consider myself a performer; a comic as opposed to stand-up comedian. Stand-up comedians stand there and do their bits; I break every rule in creation. If there's a rule that can be broken in stand-up, I'll do it.

J. B. Smoove

#2. 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

#3. I like my leaders smart and serious. I don't need a stand-up comic.

Kristin Gore

#4. I say this with no fear of contradiction. Jonas Barnes is absolutely, positively the funniest stand-up comic I have ever seen. Of course, I almost never leave my home. Jonas is a great guy and was a big help to me.

Danny Bonaduce

#5. I remember I was in music class, I was a senior in high school, and my music teacher was like, You should be a stand-up comic, you could imitate anyone.

Heather McDonald

#6. 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

#7. I'm a frustrated stand-up comic. If you hand me a microphone and I get one laugh, then I'll go on for 20 minutes.

Michael Caine

#8. I think there's a core of real anger or misery inside every true stand-up comic.

Scott Raab

#9. When they meet a stand-up comic, people sometimes remark: 'That must be the hardest job in the world.' Among comedians, only Freddie Starr is not embarrassed and slightly appalled by this remark.

Arthur Smith

#10. I don't make much distinction between being a stand-up comic and acting Shakespeare - in fact, unless you're a good comedian, you're never going to be able to play Hamlet properly.

Ian McKellen

#11. Being a good husband is like being a good stand-up comic - you need ten years before you can even call yourself a beginner.

Jerry Seinfeld

#12. 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

#13. Chris Addison is a stand-up comic, but his ability to act is extraordinary, to be so natural, I've taken 25 years just getting to that level.

Peter Capaldi

#14. Being a stand-up comic, this isn't a stepping-stone for me; it's what I do, and this is what I'm always going to do. And even if I do a TV show, the only reasons to do a TV show is to get more people to know me to come out to my stand-up shows.

Bill Burr

#15. My ambition was to stop waiting tables. That was how I measured success: finally, I was able to stop waiting tables, and I was able to pay the rent, and that was by being a stand-up comic. Not a very good stand-up comic, but good enough to make a living.

Graham Norton

#16. A stand-up comic is judged by every line. Singers get applause at the end of their song no matter how bad they are.

Phyllis Diller

#17. 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

#18. 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

#19. If I had never ventured beyond being a stand-up comic, then I would be sitting in my house today working on my Leonardo DiCaprio impression.

Jim Carrey

#20. 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

#21. I don't see myself as a stand-up comic doing cynical, mean-spirited or disrespectful stuff. I'm very aware that I don't like to disrespect people too much.

Tracey Ullman

#22. Any comic like myself owes everything he has to Lenny Bruce. He was the originator. The godfather of uncensored American stand-up is clearly Lenny Bruce.

Joe Rogan

#23. I decided that, as a stand-up, I'd position myself as a cerebral, observational comic, making references to Camus and Kierkegaard. I wasn't so much concerned with getting laughs as I was with seeing audience members turn to each other at any given moment and say, "Exactly!

Martin Short

#24. And as a stand-up comic, that's the one thing I'm a little uncomfortable with. I'm not uncomfortable with sincerity in my regular life, but, like in terms of my product that I offer, I think that it's weird, because comics used to be way more sincere in the '80s.

Moshe Kasher

#25. Frank Fay [...] became renowned as the first of the great comic emcees - and in many minds the first stand-up comedian.

Kliph Nesteroff

#26. I always had one goal, and that was to be a real funny stand-up comic, and that's pretty much what I'm doing. And everything else is kind of like gravy - TV, movies.

Wanda Sykes

#27. I got 'Delhi Belly' and 'Badmaash Company' because people from the production house had seen my stand-up comic acts in a DVD that was lying in their offices. It's been a weird journey, and I think weird goes with me.

Vir Das

#28. A stand-up comedian faces the audiences and gets their immediate feedback. I hide behind the comic strip, and unless people write to me, I don't know what they think.

Stephan Pastis

#29. I wouldn't like to find out my GP was messing about with black magic. It would be like discovering that your bank manager was also a stand-up comic.

Christopher Fowler

#30. Did you know I started out as a stand-up comic? People don't believe me when I tell them. That's how I saw myself, in comedy.

Al Pacino

#31. I've loved musical theater ever since I was a kid. My mother's a pianist, and my grandfather was an amateur theater director and stand-up comic. And I was an only child. And I loved attention. So from an early age, my family was teaching old musical songs.

Rachel Bloom

#32. A really good stand-up comic is a poet; it's about the use of language. It can be really poetic. And I like politically conscious comedy.

Sherman Alexie

#33. I'm a stand up comic and I always sit and slouch, and I got my girlfriend pregnant on my sterile uncles pull-out couch.

Bo Burnham

#34. People called me a hoodlum and a thug. But they didn't tell you I was a carpenter, an architect, a stand-up comic - even a bartender. And a barbecue cook. But they didn't tell you that.

Bobby Seale

#35. If Bob Dylan really is an historian in and of himself in his work, in his performances, he is also an historian with a unique sense of humor. There's always been a bit of a stand-up comic in him.

Greil Marcus

#36. Look, you know, you can't please everybody. I'm a stand-up comic. I know that. It doesn't matter how funny you are and how well you do, there's two people that are going to walk out of there hating you.

Billy Gardell

#37. My grandpa was an amateur stand-up comic when I was growing up ... He'd have me come up onstage with him to deliver a punch line: 'Why is your nose in the middle of your face?' 'Because it's the scenter.'

Rachel Bloom

#38. I had no desire to be a stand-up comic until I decided to do it.

Rita Rudner

#39. I get up around 7 a.m. That's very early for a stand-up comic. Then I'll have breakfast with my husband, the artist Al Ridenour, take my three dogs for a walk and commence with my work.

Margaret Cho

#40. I was born in Galveston, Texas in 1957 in the middle of a hurricane. I guess because of the drop in the barometric pressure it affected my brain and I was destined to become a stand up comic, although at that age I wasn't aware of my destiny.

Bill Engvall

#41. I'm not a joke guy; I'm not a stand-up comic.

Eugene Levy

#42. The basic function of a comic is stand-up because it's so straightforward and simple. If the audience don't laugh, you didn't do your job. I've had some audiences where I didn't care if they laughed or not because they were either too drunk or stupid.

Marcus Brigstocke