Sebastian Maniscalco Quotes

I don't get many hecklers now but answering them is an art form in itself.

You can't just yell jokes at people.

I get hecklers all the time!

I actually enjoy being heckled; it keeps it interesting, and I think it is a nice feeling for people once they have left the show.

I love hecklers. They remind you that you are a comedian.

I'm no good at the one-liner thing. It's just not me.

I've always thought stand-up comedians were the oral storytellers of our time, because they know rhetoric, they know delivery, they know timing, they know all of these things that you can only learn by telling a story out loud and interacting with an audience.

Whenever I realize I'm being a goofball, I write it down. When I release the joke onstage, I love watching the effect it has on the audience. No one wants to see someone talk who takes themselves too seriously.

The best timed joke or the best timed phrase comes at spontaneous moments and just relies on me as the host to be very quick, and that's what I do.

You say a line and you wait for them to laugh, then you say another line and you wait... It felt weird to me. But it's interesting and the energy is almost like theatre, I suppose, with all the people there.

When I come out to do my stand-up set, I pretty much get bombarded with lines from movies. You try to play off it a little bit, but that's what people want to see.

I've never really told jokes. I'm not good at it.

I was the kid who always hung back and then dropped the jokes when you least expected it. Timing was everything. My mouth sort of developed over time.

I wish I had the ability to crack wise, generally. You know, without getting punched. There's no way I could do it while getting beaten up. Definitely.

I can't tell a joke to save my soul. It's just not my thing, though I love to listen to jokes.

I was kind of a Rickles comic to begin with. I was caustic, and I was abusive and mean to the audience.

I'm not a person who can spontaneously say funny things.

Comedy and politics have a lot in common. Both are great ways to pick up chicks - just look at Governor Spitzer. Or Ellen Degeneres. Both require spending time on the road meeting strangers who often have the desire to throw things at you. Both are difficult, if not impossible, to do all alone. And both rely heavily on personality.

I was always writing. I was writing in high school because it was a really competitive school for class clowns; I used to have to write all of my snaps and my disses the night before and then act like I was making it up the next day.

I haven't got an ad lib for people throwing bread rolls at my hat.

I was always good at being observationally funny - like, contributing something funny to the conversation.

There's nothing like the freedom of being in a roomful of strangers and trying to make them laugh... You either sink or swim. It's like verbal boxing.

I need to keep my ad-libbing skills honed and make sure I'm able to banter with people and treat topics a bit more light-heartedly. But as a stand-up, first and foremost, my job is to make sure that I can write the routine that hopefully people will talk about when something big happens.

Being funny is very complex.

Especially when I'm heckled, that's a sticky situation because I don't defuse it... I really envy guys who have a grittier onstage presence and can really go after someone. I used to teach preschool.