Jerry Seinfeld Quotes

I don't play comedy as comedy. That would be the biggest trap. I think about the characters and their situations. Then you don't have to worry where the laugh is going to be. But comedy is harder than drama.

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

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.

I think that's something that people don't realize enough about when they get into comedy - it's not just about sitting back and observing and saying something funny.

In stand-up, you do need to be having fun up there, like Richard Pryor said, but you have to know yourself well, too... You start learning, and it's like playing a piano. You know exactly what keys to stroke, 'cause really, with comedy, you're, like, fiddling with people's souls.

I think Trump is terrible for comedy. A lot of people say he is great. He's not. You can't joke a joke.

There's a fraudulent root element of comedy in that we say things night after night as though they are rolling effortlessly from the brain and off the tongue, when in fact they are crafted over weeks and months and years.

Anybody can make jokes. But unless they come from conviction, and there's truth in them, you haven't nailed it. They aren't as funny as they could be, and they don't make a point.

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.

The only time I get sick of making people laugh is when I'm in a non-writing-joke mode, and I just can't seem to come up with anything new that's funny. That's a tough place to be as a comedian.

When you're doing stand-up, you want to stand onstage and, to the extent that you can, uncomplicatedly entertain.

Writing comedy is an exposing thing because you're putting yourself on the line with every joke you write, and although you can't second-guess an audience, if you want to be successful, you have to write stuff people like.

I moved from acting to stand-up because castings are just about what you look like. It doesn't matter if you can act or not. In comedy, no one cares what you look like.

Coming up with comedy is hard, man. Those bits aren't easy to think of!

You can't be funny if you don't have good material.

The goal of almost every comic is to find a comedy voice - a specific point of view that an audience can latch onto.

Comedy is an amazing calling. Once you get that first laugh, it's hard to turn away. Then, of course, you're hooked and you have to learn how to survive in the business.

A special validates you as a stand-up by documenting your material.

If you're a comedian, you are looking for material in daily life.

The basic function of a comic is stand-up because it's so straightforward and simple. If the audience don't laugh, you didn't do your job. I've had some audiences where I didn't care if they laughed or not because they were either too drunk or stupid.

Comedy is not funny. Comedy is hard work and timing and lots and lots of rehearsals.

Specifically in stand-up, I love jokes. I love short, structured ideas and a punchline.

Stand-up is successful if they laugh. It's unsuccessful if they don't laugh.

Doing stand-up takes the fun out of being funny.

When I was in high school I saw Steven Wright, a brilliant one-liner comedian, and I thought: 'That's what I should do; I should write one-liners.' And I did. My first album is mostly one-liners.