Jessi Klein Quotes

I did years of summer stock. I sort of only wanted to be an actor. And then at 19, I was funny, and I had some of these bits that I did for friends, and I immediately could get on television.

I started in action, and then I went to comedy school.

I've been a comedian since I was fourteen. But I've never really been a CEO.

I adore doing comedy, I think it's fantastic. I never saw myself doing exclusively comedy.

At one point when I was very young, when I was first starting out, I thought, 'Well, one day I'll be able to put all the music away and become a real comedian.' But then I realized there are amazing musical comedians out there, that musical comedy is probably something I'll always want to pursue.

I ended up going to college for visual arts but moved up to New York after I graduated from college in 2006 and started going gung ho to the Upright Citizens Brigade, and I realized that that was what I was really interested in and what I really wanted to do.

I never really set out to be a comedian, but as a kid, I loved doing sketches and playing characters. And then a great friend kept telling me I should be a comedian, so I followed her advice and gave it a shot.

Seeing the energy of 'SNL' made me want to be a part of it. If that was a job, I thought, that was the job I wanted. That was my plan. Comedy.

It never dawned on me that I had the option of becoming a comedian. I come from a little dirt street town in northwest Texas, and they really don't talk about the arts there much on career day.

If my career path takes me elsewhere, that's great. But comedy is my forte.

I went to theater school, and then comedy... just happened.

My whole life, I knew that I was going to be funny for a living.

I have always been a comedian - that has always been my job and it is what I want to do for a long time to come.

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

No, I never really set out to be a stand up. I wanted to be a writer of some sort. I thought I'd do a bit of stand up and hopefully that will lead to stuff and little did I know it kind of snowballed. Before I knew it I was doing stand up 300 nights a year.

When I was doing comedy in New York, before I was in movies, I was never known as the deadpan actress. I was just a comedienne.

So many of these comics are just frustrated singers or actors - they want to get a gig doing a sitcom. It's paint-by-the-numbers comedy, lame joke-telling. They're drawn to it as a career move.

If I had to design a career for myself, I would have done comedy.

I got into comedy so I could stay out all night.

I wasn't really qualified to be on Saturday Night Live - I'm not like an impressionist or anything.

I spent 25 years as a stand-up comedian.

I'm doing comedy development at National Lampoon.

I grew up wanting to make movies, and along the way I suddenly found that I had a career doing comedy.

I will always do stand-up, even if my acting career takes off. Stand-up is my life.

Even though my father was a radio comedian, it wasn't cool to say, at a young age, 'I want to be a comedian.'