Todd Barry Quotes

As a comedian, you see all parts of the country because you play there.

I think comedy is difficult, and I'm amazed so many people want to do it. I'll be buying jeans and somebody will say, "I'm a comedian" - the guy selling you the jeans. The desire to be a comedian is weird. I found it weird myself to want to be one; I was a schoolboy when I wanted to be one but I didn't know how to do it. That was 50 years ago, so times have changed greatly. There seems to be a long line of people desperate to do it and most of them are quite good.

I really wanted to, but I just didn't understand how people became comedians. I kind of thought it was something you were born into. And so I wanted to be a veterinarian or an architect. I wanted to be in a band, and for some reason I could understand how you could be in a band because I had guitars and all my friends played music. Comedy was a secret want, but it wasn't anything I pursued.

All of my life doing interviews, comedy has been my favorite thing, comedians are my favorite people.

Everything I do on stage, I made up in saloons. I started doing it in front of people, and that became my performance. I never had writers.

Comedy shows in D.C. are so much fun. I think because of the intense area that is connected to politics that people need, they need their down time. D.C. audiences are almost universally praised by comedians.

The Comedy Store - all three rooms were filled with 800 people in the room. And during that time, all these guys and some women, but mostly guys who weren't funny were doing stand up for a living; they weren't accountants, they were making $30-$50 grand a year on the road, or more.

I know a lot of girls in the comedy world who are kind of like me. I don't know where the slutty girls hang out, but it's not the comedy world as far as I know.

In the '80s especially, a lot of comedians felt compelled to stick with what made them famous and those people became caricatures.

To succeed in comedy you ultimately have to put in the hours and get lucky - The amount of people who are able to break through is so small a fraction of the amount of people trying.

Comedy is crowded. There are hundreds of comedians in every place in the world.

But the great thing about shows now is since we've been doing (Comedy Death Ray), they have lightened up on their booking policies a bit more and are booking somebody who isn't famous and who hasn't been around ten years. It's great to see people who've done our show - the first big show they've ever done - now they can play around town.

I like to read, but otherwise I'm just your average, self-obsessed comedian. It's pretty much all I think about.

I think both of us [ with Steve Oram], once we decided to do comedy, knew that we would have to come to London to do that.

I think comedy is on an organic upsurge right now because when I started, it was 1978 at The Comedy Store and Letterman had just stopped emceeing his morning show.

Most comedians come from a dark past and have a lot of sadness.

I'm looking to be the next comedy mogul.

You remember from watching the show, there are no "jokes." That's why if you see people on Twitter accusing me of being a "joke thief," I just tell them to come to one of my shows.

If you're into comedy, you will know what the show is about. We have so many comedy geeks, comedy enthusiasts, fanatical people who go to comedy festivals and follow comedians, and really treat it like rock 'n' roll - which it can be, but more like the geeky rock 'n' roll.

I'm friends with a lot of comedians, but we don't talk about material. Most comedians I know don't watch a lot of other comedy.

When I made 'Sleepwalk with Me,' many people asked me if was a novelty thing, a one-off. But this is the goal, I'm just hitting it 12 years after I thought I would.

I'm really ambitious about is being a really good comic and doing it for the rest of my life and getting really big. Not really famous because I want fame or attention, just a little freedom. So, that's where I'm ambitious.

I often say that ... I'm just involved in comedy, so I can be around it.

At the beggining of my career, for me the comedy circuit was a combination of desperation and the fact that it was something I could do. I sort of meandered and really had no idea what I was going to do with my life. I had a go at stand-up, and I was sort of okay at it. I'd say I'm the opposite of someone that has the urge to stand in front of strangers and make them laugh, but the idea of getting up and telling a story and people finding it amusing always appealed to me. So I'd say it was probably more about that than anything.

I haven't seen comedy as popular as it is now since when I started, in the late 1980s boom. It feels like that again, in that it's everywhere, and it's great to see.