Rob Delaney Quotes

When you're going for a joke, you're stuck out there if it doesn't work. There's nowhere to go. You've done the drum role and the cymbal clash and you're out on the end of the plank.

I'd like to go back to standup. I don't like to think I've done my last gig. At the moment it terrifies me, I get really nervous. It's a great buzz when it goes well.

Most comics' first gig is either brilliant or horrific.

With a live audience, it's very clear when you've pushed it too far to the edge - because you fall off that edge and hit bottom with a thud. Nothing abstract about that. You know you went too far when you hear that groan or worse - that silence instead of the big laugh you were expecting following your hilariously edgy joke.

It's grueling never knowing if the audience is going to think you're funny. It's soul-destroying when they don't laugh.

If I walk out onstage and I get a warm, excited response, it makes me feel so confident and happy, and then it's so easy for me up there.

The worst thing that can happen to a comedian is to do a documentary on your life and you're watching it with an audience and there's not a laugh.

I wasn't exactly uncomfortable when I did my first comedy. I was just very aware of the risks; if you do a comedy that sucks, and you suck in it, then you won't get a chance to do it again.

Comedy clubs can be brutal. Those people are for real, and if you aren't funny, they aren't laughing. They don't care who you are.

In standup, the feedback is instantaneous, and if it fails, you know you'll be off-stage and hiding in a short time.

You can play a gig as a band and not know that they hated you; with standup, after every line, you know.

A joke bombing on stage doesn't bother me, especially if it's intended to bomb.

Writing humor in my column isn't as dangerous as performing it. If I fail in front of a live audience, the humiliation is as great as anything a human being can suffer.

Every audience has its character; I like America - they love me. I suffer from stage fright, but in America not so much.

With stand-up you've just got that one chance. Audiences can be quite fickle.

Going out on a stage publicly and not knowing how people are going to react to you - once I experienced that, it made me feel much more comfortable about going into a scene.

Confronting a stadium audience, you can't see the whites of their eyes. It's just an amorphous mass of noise and, of course, you can't see the alleged billions watching at home either, so the degree to which you are intimidated is quite low.

When you're onstage and you know you're bombing, that's very, very scary. Because you know you gotta keep going - you're bombing, but you can't stop. And you know that half an hour from now, you're still gonna be bombing. It takes a thick skin.

I like getting up in front of an audience. It's fun when you go to a baseball game and the crowd is cheering you. I can't deny it. And it's very funny, too. Sometimes you're shy; you go somewhere and everyone's looking at you, so you feel a little self-conscious.

When I perform onstage, I'm actually kind of nearsighted, so I don't have any real, true understanding of what the audience is like.

I was honoured when they asked me to appear at the president's birthday rally in Madison Square Garden. There was like a hush over the whole place when I came on to sing 'Happy Birthday,' like if I had been wearing a slip, I would have thought it was showing or something. I thought, 'Oh, my gosh, what if no sound comes out!'

When you get onstage, you can see everyone in the audience's face, down to the detail. You can see who may or may not be yawning.

But if applause throws off your timing, then you're not the kind of comedian I would like to see. All you have to do is stand there and take it.

Actually, I failed drama in high school because of nerves. I wasn't able to memorize the words. I had complete stage fright.

Every night when I go out on stage, there's always one nagging fear in the back of my mind. I'm always afraid that somewhere out there, there is one person in the audience that I'm not going to offend!