Sherman Alexie Quotes

Stand-up comics reflect less of a visual humor and more of a commentary.

I consider myself to be doing comedy in a post-Jon Stewart world to a certain extent.

If you've never seen me perform live, I'm a must-see. I'm very funny. I have a different perspective sometimes on a lot of what I do and the world itself, especially America.

I remain just one thing, and one thing only, and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician.

Eighty per cent of my output is 'Mallory clowns on the Western canon,' and I'm happy to be that person.

I will do comedy until the day I die: inappropriate comedy, funny comedy, gender-bending, twisting comedy, whatever comedy is out there.

There's a certain line between jokes and music and poetry that's a bit blurred in my mind.

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 love the satire and skewering of comedy writing.

The pun exists in a social and political void, caring nothing for the issues of its day, content merely to display itself in its small cleverness.

I love astute observations and really great wordplay. I love the way that Louis C.K. observes life, and I love the way Patton Oswalt talks about it.

For me, comedy is a day-to-day report on the human condition. It's what's happening right now. I get maybe 20 minutes of my act straight from the newspaper.

I started off at the Second City in Chicago... It's an improvisational theater that ostensibly does social and political satire, but when I was there, we generally didn't. We did character work, and we did just the silliest things we could think of. We weren't all that concerned with, you know, changing the world through mime.

Ksenia Sobchak as president is like Sergei Shnurov as an artist. It's satire. It's a very high-level art project.

Monty Python never directly said, 'We're liberals' - they just did their sketches, and you had to figure it out. Generally, they were anti-establishment, of course, making fun of the people in power. I think, comedians, that's their job - pointing out what other people might not notice and going, 'Yoo-hoo, over here.'

All comedy is really talking about social issues and things that are affecting our lives.

I look to icons like George Carlin, Chris Rock, and Richard Pryor on how to present these concepts of social change and subversiveness to an audience in a way that's palatable.

I thought that through the strip, I could vent my spleen and be funny at the same time. But when it comes to humor, there's no substitute for reality and politicians.

I love doing stand up. I think it's a really worthwhile art form. It's so unique in all the things it combines, in terms of it being philosophizing, preaching, speaking truth to power and basic communicating. It's a good way to talk back to the world.

Comedy can do so much more than make you laugh.

I think of myself as a comedian who has the pleasure of writing jokes about things that I actually care about, and that's really it. I have great respect for people who are in the front lines and the trenches of trying to enact social change, but I am far lazier than that.

Satire is moral outrage transformed into comic art.

Puns are the highest form of literature.

Comedy is a great tool. We [comics] are trying to find ways to use humor to enlighten people without preaching to them.

I think the job of a comedian is to make people laugh, but also challenge them to laugh at things they didn't know they could until now.