Pete Holmes Quotes

Beyond any role that I ever had, really early on as a stand-up, I would see actors decide to try it and they would bomb miserably. What I realized was that stand-up, acting and writing are all their own disciplines.

The only way to get better at stand-up is to do loads of gigs, and I don't know. I spread myself pretty thin to get the stage time. I'd love to do more, really.

There's no real preparing at home for stand-up. You just go and you just do it.

Stand-up keeps you alive. It is definitely the most specialized field in comedy because you need to stay sharp and well-tuned every night.

When you're doing comedy constantly, you're organized: you know where everything is, you know how to get out of it, you know how to stretch it. But, like, doing 'SNL,' I stopped doing spots, and then I would finally do some sets - it take me so long to, kind of, get in the rhythm of it.

The most frightening thing about playing Dick Gregory is I've never done stand-up before, and I had to learn how to be a stand-up comedian, which was a bit of a challenge.

If I'm in a town for very long, usually I'll work out in the comedy club just to keep my chops or work out the beats on new stuff.

I have a tough time with stand-up because I am an improviser. I can riff; I can do crowd work, so I don't prepare.

I started by doing a little funny story, and then I started going to open mics. I realized I had a lot of work to do - you have to get over the stage fright and get your stage presence up. It took me some time, but I finally feel that I'm at a point where I feel comfortable on stage and giving my point of view.

I always try to improve my stand-up game, it's very important for me.

As a stand-up comic, you have to do the road.

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

When you are doing stand-up comedy, you are the writer, producer, director, sometimes bouncer.

As a comic, you try something and if it works you go with it and grind it to death.

I really admire stand-up, and I think I would have loved to learn how to do it. I think it's terrifying and thrilling. A really cool thing to do. It's a dying art, in a way.

I never want to cannibalize my act, and I'm really excited that I am going to be able to perform new material. I'm not a huge fan of repeating jokes, and I don't really do any of my old material from old stand-up acts.

Not everyone can be as successful a performer as myself, who gave 10 great performances the first time I ever did comedy, and then toiled in obscurity for years.

I could never do stand-up because it's that thing of having to get up on stage. And out of every 10 jokes you tell, nine of them have to get a really good response.

Richard Lewis is the master at taking a joke that he's told a million times in a row in the past year, on the road, and making it look like he's pulling it out of thin air.

Stand-up came out of three things. Frustration, necessity and arrogance. I didn't have a great career ahead of me in anything. Someone literally said to me, 'You should try stand-up,' and took me to a venue.

You have to do stand-up quite a long time before you learn how to do it well.

Sometimes an actor will stumble on the joke, and I'm right on them. Back it up before the audience hears the bad version of the joke, because humor is 90% surprise. If they know what's coming, they won't laugh as hard.

My stand-up is quite good now, people say. It's just like a big conversation each time. Every gig is a rehearsal.

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

Whether it's a double take or a spit take or an extra-long pause before a reaction or a line, I try to be as cognizant as possible about the technical end of it. So I think the physical stuff works easier for me than maybe for others who are more just going on instinct.