Jim Gaffigan Quotes

As a comedian, you have to start the show strong and you have to end the show strong. Those are the two key elements. You can't be like pancakes. You're all happy at first, but then by the end, you're sick of 'em.

Jesse has opened for me extensively on the road so I’ve seen him do hundreds of sets. He is always super funny, has tons of material and the crowds love him. Bottom line, Jesse Joyce is a great comedian.

I’ll always be doing stand-up as long as people are still interested in seeing me.

'Where's Bill going?' He's going to comedy death. Boom! He pops out of it with another joke. It's my particular style.

Stand-up is just me trying to be as funny as possible in the most concentrated hour with me standing on stage with no storyline, no plot line, and no character development.

Everyone tells me I need to do comedy. It's never something that crossed my mind, but to be able to do a true comedy and make people laugh, that would be great.

I am a product... I'm a comedian. I'm not curing cancer. In the end, I tell jokes. I make people laugh. I make sense out of ridiculous situations, but in the end, it's all about laughter. It's all about your cheek hurting, your stomach hurting.

You gotta have the balls to go out there and be funny, man.

I think anybody in front of a crowd is a comedian.

I've always been a big fan of comedy and sketch comedy, and I like to laugh, but you can't just be funny. You do have to work at it, and you have to try to know what your role is and when you can insert humor, or when it's best not to.

There's no room for failure performing [stand-up] for a black audience. If you don't get them right away it's tough winning them back even if you're doing top-notch material. If you didn't win them right when you walked out there, it's tough.

Comedy is difficult for an actor. But I think I have a good sense of humor and manage to make people laugh and make them happy.

In comedy, though, it's good to get feedback from the audience about what they find funny.

I think comedy is one of the hardest things to pull off. You either have timing or you don't, and that's something I don't have for sure.

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.

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

When you're a stand-up, you play in front of 600 people, and it's all about timing. I could never do stand-up comedy; it would be way too hard for me.

My stand-up is quite good now, people say. It's just like a big conversation each time. Every gig is a rehearsal.

Patrice O'Neal is the best comic I ever saw.

I do comedy shows. I make fun of myself, first of all.

You have to learn the crowd. I just pay attention to them so I can make sure I can make them laugh.

Kind of the exhausting thing about doing pure comedy, or something that's broader, is you're kind of a slave to the laugh. If it's not funny, then there's not much point in doing it. The kind of ueber-objective is to make people laugh. You always have to have that in the back of your mind, 'Eh, I've got to figure out a way to make this funny.'

When you have an entire amphitheatre of people laughing that way, it makes you feel so funny and it frees you to go further than you probably would.

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

The audience changes every night. You're the same person. You have to speak your mind and do the stuff that you think is funny and makes you laugh.