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Comedian Quotes

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Comedian Quotes

“When I was 13 I told my dad I'd rather kill myself than do an ordinary job. He vaguely muttered something about how I'd need to earn a living somehow, but he's been totally behind me, forking out money he didn't really have to send me to university. Every other comedian I've met had to fight their parents to be allowed to do this but mine have been brilliant.”

“People tell me I'm a comedian, but I don't approach acting from that perspective. I do know that everything in life has to do with your timing and perception. You have to be comfortable with the rhythm that you're in. You can't just jump into a fast rhythm if yours is slow. You might have to pick up the pace but in your own particular way. It has to do with personality, too.”

“One of the first TV shows that I did was this prank show. And we did a prank where we took a Michael Jackson impersonator and I played his publisher.I was just really good at my job.We were just about to go onto the field to throw out the first pitch just two weeks after 9\11. It was a huge security breach, and we made a lot of cops look really dumb. Producers of the show thought it would be really funny and I didn't think about it because I was a young dumb comedian. So I got arrested and went to jail in the Bronx, and now I can never go back to Yankee Stadium.”

“eah, you don't get a lot of meatheads doing improvised theater to begin with, and that's always been my thing. I talk about the nerd/meathead dichotomy on my podcast a lot, but there was a time when I was doing UCB full-time and playing men's league rugby in New York City, and I was like the funniest, artsiest rugby player, and the bro-iest improv comedian. I've always managed to sort of be in both sides.”

“And as Craig Brown - he's an English humorist, not a comedian but he's just a writer and humorist - I'm quite a fan of. I heard him talking in a rather similar way on the radio. He said I'm the sort of person - I can't remember exactly what he said, but it was rather interesting - he said I'm the sort of person that can be reduced to tears in an empty church and feel like I'm the CEO of the Devil's organization in a full one, and I tend to feel like that as well. I love empty churches and going into them looking around, but I'm not a churchgoer at all.”

“Well, human rights defenders, freedom of speech advocates, lawyers that we spoke to said this is really an expansion. After the military ouster of Egypt's unpopular, but elected Islamist president in 2013, we saw political opponents being arrested by the thousands, really. Then we saw a popular comedian go off the air out of fear of retribution.”

“There's so many variables in comedy. Comedy is not this thing that's a performance like a play. It's really an interaction with every single person in the room. And if there's a weirdness in the room for any people, be it something the comedians did at the top of the set or be it the mixture of the people isn't right, something can go awry. So it's really great to see you proven wrong about someone.”

“We're shaking up a format, which I think is always a good thing. The thing about [2011 Oscar hosts] James [Franco] and Anne [Hathaway] is, they've both hosted Saturday Night Live, and they both did a good job at it. So they are accustomed to working with short rehearsal time, and live, lots of pressure, rewrites, things like that. They can make quick changes, which is very advantageous, and they're skilled comedians.”

“Authenticity seems like sort of a joke. Actually I believe it was the late comedian George Burns who said, "if you can fake sincerity, you've got it made." People cannot be invariant across situations and roles and, moreover, leaders need to be true not to themselves, but to what others want, need, and expect from them.”

“When you start in the childhood period, when you begin to form a comic sense, it was the radio comedians - from the last days of radio and the first days of television. And Spike Jones. And the Marx Brothers. They represented anarchy. They took things that were nice and decent and proper, and they tore them to shreds. That attracted me.”

“Because of my comedic-influence growing up, Mel Brooks, Jim Carrey, Steve Martin… A lot of Jeff comedic-influences included Charlie Chaplin and physical comedians of the silent-era. What we were able to do together is to show all these major influences but make it into our own comedy. We've seen the stereotypical boy-meets-girl story a hundred thousand times…”

“On the other side of the spectrum, you see someone like Donald Trump, who is using as the basis of his campaign political incorrectness. It's clearly intentional. He'd have to be a complete moron just to coincidentally insult Mexicans, and women, and disabled people, and Muslims. So clearly he's using it as a vote winner. But I think with comedians there's a responsibility.”

“It's very interesting being an artist and a comedian, (because) you aim for jobs that will feed your ego, but when you get up to the precipice of them, you actually have to deliver. You actually have to understand that you're reaching a new level where there are way more eyes on you, way more expectations and way more pressure.”

“I love doing it [hosting the Oscars] because I love the danger of it and you have to come through and think on your feet. That's why that show, no matter who hosts it, it really should be a fast-thinking comedian who is really quick on their feet that can handle situations that happen, or somebody with that kind of mentality that can capitalize on something.”