Alan King Quotes

After I got my first laugh on stage, I was hooked.

Comedians have to write to survive because you don't get cast for your beauty.

I always tell comics you got to hang with your stand-up.

I think I probably would have gone into stand-up.

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

To get a job where the only thing you have to do in your career is to make people laugh-well, it's the best job in the world.

It seems like when I first started, people got into comedy because they wanted to be good comedians.

Once I started doing stand-up, everything fell into place. That was when I started acting more; I felt like I'd found my place in the business.

I realize as I get older that stand-up is a huge part of who I am. I think I'll do it for the rest of my life.

I feel lucky that I can have people laugh solidly for a whole hour by just saying what I think and getting paid for it.

The only way to stay sharp is to do live shows. There is no part-time comedy.

People who want to do stand-up from the start - I mean that's an extremely self-centred thing to want, isn't it?

I was lucky enough to find stand-up really early in life. And I'm so grateful that I did, because the second I found it, I was like, 'I know what I want to do'.

From the age of 14, I remember thinking I wanted to be a comedian. But that was like saying I wanted to be an astronaut. It felt like a million miles away, something I could never do, but would be great to.

I started standup at age nineteen. I decided that the only way I was going to try show business as a career was if I could make total strangers laugh.

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

A lot of people get into stand-up as a back door into acting or something. But I really like writing jokes and telling jokes.

When I was in third grade I taught myself ventriloquism... What's hard is to learn to be an entertainer and make people laugh. I was a few years out of college before I felt I had enough material. Then in 1988 I moved to L.A. and started to do some shows at comedy clubs.

Those early days of comedy are when you get addicted to it.

Some people use stand-up to get something else in their careers, but it's truly the art form of stand-up I love.

I've been doing stand-up since '89.

After I graduated, I tried Broadway, which was difficult for me. It was tough to get a part on Broadway, so I just started talking to audiences at different social gatherings, and little by little I became Don Rickles - whatever that is.

With stand-up, it doesn't matter who you are. If the audience claps because they love your movies, that clapping stops after five seconds, and then it's your job to make them laugh.

My job is mostly to entertain and be funny.

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