Top 185 Standup Quotes

I’m talking about some real subjects and issues in my standup. I’m attempting to make a point about technology and how it’s changing our society and our lives, and our addiction to social media, and how it affects marriages and relationships.

In standup, the feedback is instantaneous, and if it fails, you know you’ll be off-stage and hiding in a short time.

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.

In standup, it’s just you. You’re your own writer, your own critic, your own director, and it’s never the same. You really don’t always have it down. Your continue to learn, you continue to risk, and I really love it.

I crave the variety, I really do. I’d probably say standup as I think that’s what I do best, if I may say so. But it can be a really self-absorbed, obsessive way to live your life, whereas doing theatre is very collaborative and creative and intense, I’d hate to miss out on that.

Metal is easily my favorite thing – Exodus and Anthrax and Megadeth – so it just kind of organically came through in the standup act.

Standup is essentially part of your personality with the volume turned up.

I wasn’t classically trained as an actor; I wasn’t pursuing standup comedy. I really came into it through the back door. And there was a benefit to that, I think, because I wasn’t pressing; I wasn’t pushing.

I’ve been working on my ground game, my jiu jitsu, and my standup as well. Those are areas where I feel like really needs to be cleaned up and areas I know that I can get better.

I love doing standup, but I love watching it more. Watching people like Michelle Buteau or Baron Vaughn get up and do their thing – that is what comedy can be like.

As a standup, I try to change the world. As an entertainer, I try to entertain. And as a lesbian, I try to pick up the prettiest girl in the room.

I was raised by a dad who has a fantastic sense of humor who raised me on ‘The Muppet Show,’ Steve Martin movies, and Woody Allen’s standup, and he really encouraged me to ham it up from an early age.

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.

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.

I’m more of a sketch guy than a standup.

As far as standup goes, I really feel like I can stand and bang and trade with anybody in the game.

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.

Actors, you have to wait for people to give you work, or you have to make your own stuff. But standup, I could just say, ‘I want to do standup in 30 minutes,’ and I can go do standup. Or I could just say, ‘I want to do standup in a few weeks in this city.’

I really love standup because it’s something that I’ve been literally doing for 40 years, which means I’m a thousand years old.

Even though standup seems like one-way conversation, if you’re doing it right, it’s actually a two-way discussion between the comic and the audience… the audience just happens to be communicating through laughter.

I have a hard time describing myself as a standup comedian because I don’t feel like I’m doing stand up jokes more than I am acting like a person who has a bad point of view.

Right around 11 or 12, when I saw Eddie Murphy’s standup special ‘Delirious,’ and I taped it on a VHS tape – I think I watched it every single day. I lived and breathed Eddie Murphy for that whole year.

I first did standup at a lesbian bar. I didn’t know it was a lesbian bar at the time, but the lesbians loved me. I was huge among the lesbians and am to this day. I’m thrilled with the lesbian support.

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.

Louis C. K. is one of my all time favorite standup comedians.

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.

This is my chance to get out there and appease the fans of my music as well as show people that I do do standup comedy because a lot of people don’t know that’s where I started.

In my early years doing standup, I bombed a lot.

Whenever people hear that Kurt Cobain was a fan of my standup, it’s like hearing Jimi Hendrix loved Buddy Hackett or something.

I did a lot of standup from ages 19 to 24 but then stopped to focus on sketch with Broken Lizard.

Standup is full of young white guys with generic life experiences.

I just kind of went from being a standup, one-man band, to then kind of breezing back and working with other people. And now I’m just trying to be a legitimate guy who pays the rent, you know.

As a standup comedian, I’ve worked almost every New Year’s Eve of my adult life. It’s the best-paying night of the year.

Both the benefit and the terrifying aspect of standup is when it’s going poorly, you’ve only yourself to blame. There’s no one to bail you out. But when it’s going great, all that approval is for you.

I just like doing standup, that’s all I’m interested in or good at.

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.

Standup keeps me grounded and keeps me in touch. I get to go from small towns to big cities, across Canada and the U.S., and you’re out there and talking to people. You get a sense of what they respond to.

So many comedians, if you asked them, ‘What’s your priority in standup?’ it’s probably gonna be to make people laugh or to entertain them. That is just way down on my priority list, if on my list at all. I’m into breaking records. If I can do a set and break a record and get no laughs, I’m happy.

Trying my hand at standup was exciting to me.

Writing a whole series was a crash course in screenwriting, which is a very different muscle to standup comedy writing.

Unlike ‘Deal or No Deal,’ which is for the entire family, my standup is not for the entire family.

I guess there’s enough information out there to support that I’m a crazy, wild dude and rock and roll and this, that and the other. And there’s enough information to support that, you know, I’m a single father, that, you know, has been a pretty standup guy in his community and pretty private about that stuff.

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.

I didn’t have any terrible survival jobs. The main job I had before I was able to transition over to acting full-time was working at an after-school program at a middle school teaching improv and standup. So even when I had a regular job, I was still lucky enough to be doing the stuff I loved in some way.

Once you’re in a room like ’30 Rock,’ it’s a creative setting, so you write more even after you go home, just because you’re still in that mode of coming up with jokes. So the job wasn’t sapping standup jokes, but it was sapping stand up time and energy, and I wouldn’t be able to travel as much.

I have a standup I do in gay bars, and it’s filthy. I have to assess the crowd. If it’s an all-gay crowd, I’ll dip into the stories of my sordid past.

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.

Other kids would sneak out of the house to go to parties and do untoward things. I was sneaking out to do standup downtown. It paid off.

I don’t want to be a spokesman for family values, but that’s the way my standup is perceived.

No one goes into standup to make money. The frustration and rejection are just too much.

Any standup that you see who you go, ‘Oh, wow, that guy’s, you know, that guy’s making it.’ Inevitably, they’ve been doing it 10, 12 years – 10, 15 years. Because it takes time.

You really have to be ambitious and have that drive to really become well known and successful as a standup.

There’s something so naked about being on stage as a musician. I think about that even with standup comedy or something – like, ‘This is it, this is what I got.’

I love to work. I love doing standup.

Sometimes I start off shows by explaining to people that it’s just a bunch of stories – I always say ‘It’s like standup, just less funny.’

My standup is observational, but it’s self-observational, and it’s self-deprecating, definitely.

I got into standup because I wanted to be an actor, and then I ended up loving standup for the next eleven years.