Bo Burnham Quotes

Every comedian is just doing the comedy they find funny. This is me and it's not clean in any way. I could get a lot more work on TV playing clean but it's never interesting.

I think there is a weird loneliness that comes with being a comedian. There is something definitely inside the personality of a person who wants to be a comedian, and (he or she) is looking to connect (to the audience) at all times.

I'm glad that that era of stand-up is over, because I think it adversely affected a lot of people who could have been really, really great comedians. Because they unconsciously or subconsciously stifled their wild impulses, and were thinking about the five clean minutes for The Tonight Show, or the 20-minute sitcom pitch as a stand-up act.

Here's what I'm afraid of. I know a lot of comedians, friends of mine, who just got into the 'Doesn't matter what I say. It doesn't matter. They're just gonna laugh anyway.'

When I tell a joke, I don't think about who's listening to it. I tell the jokes I think are funny.

Comedians are always going to be in the showbiz middle class, you're not Brad Pitt; you're never going to be Sam Rockwell or Shia LaBeouf or Leo DiCaprio. You're a comic.

The whole idea of comedy, there is nothing normal about going up on stage to make strangers laugh. But I'm also not an exhibitionist like other comics. I'm not up there talking about masturbating.

I'm a comedian and there are a lot of things I'm still learning. I love one liners because I love smart jokes. I also don't like complaining about society or whining about my life on stage.

I like to think of myself as the middleman between Fred Allen and Henny Youngman.

Comedians have a tendency to have a limited range, they tend to do one thing and do it very well, but it's limited.

The classic comedian says there's nothing that's taboo; if you laugh at one thing you've got to laugh at everything, that comedy is taking people to dark areas and showing them the light.

I wanted to be a comedian, I wanted people to laugh at what I was saying, not to be staring at my boobs or wearing a skirt and show off my ... I just didn't think that that was the best way to get taken seriously in that world.

I'm a nightclub comic. That's what I do. I work in the clubs uncensored because my mind is uncensored, and those are the thoughts that I have. I do the kind of comedy that I would enjoy seeing.

My comedy is like emotional hang-gliding.

Well probably the coolest show of that whole tour was in Germany. I had a chunk of material on [Adolf] Hitler, and I was worried about how they'd react, but they loved it.

I became a guy who wanted to be a comedian someday, or a comic actor. The way I put it was, I'll be like Danny Kaye. He was kind of the model I had in mind.

Comedians on the stage are invariably suicidal when they get home.

I talked about everything, man. I've always written material that everyone can laugh at. I talked about growing up. I did a lot of physical comedy. That was my thing. I was a physical comedian. I did anything and everything from running on a treadmill, I can paint a picture on stage of anything.

I don't like jokes about sex or bodily functions or drug use or the difference between New York and L.A. I never do any of that.

You saw a lot of guys, especially in the early '90s, whose acts were a pitch for a sitcom. A lot of them were very funny, but there's nothing worse than watching comedians or musicians who are up there and are doing something they're not interested in.

Once when Larry the Cable Guy was on Conan's show, Conan O'Brien was so offended by Larry's material, he had to walk away from the desk he was so offended.

Becoming a comedienne was my way of adjusting to puberty.

With comics it's very close, like, "I don't want to say anything onstage that I wouldn't say offstage." Or vice versa. I say "faggot" in my special and in the joke I am the faggot, if that makes sense.

I think comedians get too much credit or too much criticism for the style of comedy they do, and they generally do the style of comedy that works for them. [...] There's no kind of shrewd calculation going into the type of standup we all do. It's like David Cross is supposed to be doing the David Cross' type of standup.

You live your comedic life close to the edge, you're gonna cross the line and offend people.