Top 60 Stand-Up Comedy Quotes

Stand-up comedy is an art form and it dies unless you expand it.

I started to do a study on how not to do stand-up comedy. Yeah, it’s lonely work. You die, you die alone. It’s you, the light, and the audience. If you win, you win big. If you lose, you lose big time.

A talk show is about having a look at a famous face, a bit of stand-up comedy, knockabout stuff – an interview is what Barbara Walters or Connie Chung does in the States, in-depth, done properly.

I think it’s a very easy thing to make people laugh, especially with a script, and then you’ve just got to dress up. That’s also the idea of comedy in Bollywood. But in stand-up comedy, there’s a man with just some content trying to make everyone laugh.

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.

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.

Nobody wanted to help me get my start, not to mention it’s tough being a female in a man’s world of stand-up comedy. It’s a very competitive world, and it was a challenge to find my own voice, stick to my guns.

I was always fascinated by the stand-up comedy shows from my childhood.

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.

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.

Dylan Moran, my favourite comedian, was walking down the street in Edinburgh. I nearly got run over as I sprinted up to him to tell him I was his biggest fan. His stand-up comedy gives me a stitch from laughing.

I was a very special child. I did stand-up comedy. I did it all. My family didn’t understand. ‘Aren’t you tired?’ I’m like, ‘No.’ I’m like an insomniac, I hardly sleep, I’m always on the move.

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.

I’ve always loved movies, and enjoyed theater and stand-up comedy and I had a knack for writing and performing.

I’m a comedian, for God’s sake. Viewers shouldn’t trust me. And you know what? They’re hip enough to know they shouldn’t trust me. I’m just doing stand-up comedy.

Stand-up comedy is a lot about amplifying emotions and situations; movie acting has a lot to do with mellowing things down and making them subtle. The transition was almost terrifying because of the magnitude of change.

Stand-up comedy is a raunchy profession.

‘Stand-Up Planet’ was Anthony Bourdain-meets-stand-up comedy.

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

Stand-up comedy is something that you have to strive to do, multiple times a night, every night, to be good.

Stand-up comedy is not a man’s job. It’s an alpha job: To be the only person in a room with a microphone who’s allowed to talk.

I did stand-up comedy for seventeen years. I need to explore other things.

Stand-up comedy is not for the faint-hearted or the thin-skinned.

Stand-up comedy seems like a terrifying thing. Objectively. Before anyone has done it, it seems like one of the most frightening things you could conceive, and there’s just no shortcut – you just have to do it.

I thought it would be a funny concept to publish a book about stand-up comedy with Faber, the poetry publisher, and to apply to stand-up the same sort of weight of annotation that you would to a classic work of literature, an epic poem. I thought that would be funny.

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.

Although no one explicitly wants a president who could have a reliable fall back career in stand-up comedy, everyone shudders at the thought of a Rutherford B. Hayes or John Kerry.

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.

I’m doing stand-up comedy. I’m working on a one-woman show about how I don’t like my baby. There is a period of time where a baby is born where the next 3 months is harrowing. A lot of people say it’s the most wonderful time, but for me it was harrowing.

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.

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 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.

Stand-up comedy is a different game all together. You have to improvise on the spot if you feel that the audience isn’t enjoying your performance. In a movie or serial, you are in a situation while on stage you create a situation.

Stand-up comedy is a sickness. Who wouldn’t want a room full of people laughing and screaming at you just because of who you are? Nothing is as good, except maybe having a baby.

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

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.

At Evergreen you can create your own major and your own classes. So I actually studied stand-up comedy.

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.

I don’t like doing things by halves, and I realised you can’t do stand-up comedy part-time.

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.

It’s best, I think, to treat stand-up comedy on the telly like tapas: small tasters of something you’d love a proper plate of.

Stand-up comedy is a really lonely profession: you ‘perform for 2000 people, then you go to a hotel room by yourself and stare at a wall.

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.

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.

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

The word ‘supportive’ has no place in stand-up comedy. I hate when people are like, ‘Support female comedy.’ That’s not a real genre of comedy. I think if you have true respect for women as three-dimensional creators who are innovative, you wouldn’t group them together like that.

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.

I see myself touring internationally – everywhere, every theater, every arena – and putting out stand-up comedy specials until I can’t even stand no more. Even then, I’ll probably do my comedy special in a hospital bed.

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.’

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

Comedy comes from tragedy, and being Iranian in America from 1979 on had been quite tragic. In stand-up comedy, I was able to take the reality and exaggerate it.

I’ve a belt that I have worn for every single stand-up comedy session since I was 19. I fear if I ever lose it, my career would crumble. That’s my one OCD.

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.