Mae Martin Quotes

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

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.

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.

A lot of the time, you're supposed to play to the top of your intelligence, as truthful as possible. But when you're on stage making people laugh, you're still acting. I think it helped me a bunch to go on stage two or three times a week.

Impressions are still kind of hard for me and not what I love to do the most, but with characters, I think there's an element of fearlessness. You try to figure out the best reading and wording of the jokes before the show, and then you just really have to go hard.

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.

When I started stand-up, the people I admired most were the people who were the most themselves onstage.

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.

The more you work in this business as a comedian, the closer you get to just being yourself onstage, on camera, the more well received you are.

I feel I've always got to keep my stand-up because I never want to lose it.

What you learn from studying acting is that you have to have the courage to just make strong choices.

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.

Onstage, there's no hiding; you either can or can't act. There's no second take.

And you can't hide in a comedy scene either. You have to give in to the scene and commit.

If I do a bit on stage, I prepare too much. Those bits are all really, really carefully written, and overwritten, and researched. I really don't feel like I can wing it. So I write it out word for word, and when I'm onstage I'll improvise around it.

The more you perform and get out there, I guess the more practice you have at it and the better you are and the more comfortable you are on stage.

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.

Richard Lewis has this incredible ability to look like he's just... you know it's an act that's been honed. What you have to do in standup is create spontaneity, somehow; even though you've done this act a million times, you gotta look like you're almost just thinking of it now, to make it entertainer.

I can tell jokes. I can talk to the audience. I can relax. I can change my songs whenever I want. I can change the tempos. I can change the mood, because I'm in charge.

There is never hesitation about doing stand-up. It's just me doing my thing.

I have to visualise my jokes, live my jokes, feel the audience because every audience is different. It's like having a different dancing partner every night.

When I began doing stand-up, it took me a long time to get an hour's worth of material together.

Bad improv happens with people who are inexperienced with each other and don't know the craft that well. But bad stand-up is something that could happen to someone at any level in their career.

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.

There's a certain truism that you can't be self-conscious in comedy.