Craig Ferguson Quotes

Wrestling was like stand-up comedy for me. Every night I had a live audience of 25,000 people to win over. My goal was never to be the loudest or the craziest. It was to be the most entertaining.

I want to be more physical and theatrical within the stand-up. There might be dance moments, and people better watch out - I will gallop.

There's so many ways to do stand up, and I think for awhile, people weren't really maximizing the freedom of it.

I'd been to the Comedy Store, and I loved the terror of it and the way the best comedians could control the crowd. What confidence that would give you, if you could somehow survive.

I'm pretty good at getting over people throwing stuff at me. If you've been doing stand up long enough you know how to swing back and get the laughs.

Before doing stand-up, I thought acting was easy - it's not easy. It's a hard life. It's easy in its own way, you just stand there and talk. But there is a difference between people who can do it well and people who can't.

It's hard to get laughs when you're new.

Comedy's easy for me now - it's all about timing and the way you deliver lines. I use facial expressions to get the point across.

Stand-up is an amazing art form, I think, because it's all about you having complete control of the situation, but absolutely none.

Performing comedy, you develop a rhythm of ideas and laughs. I live for it.

When I'm doing stand-up, it's just me depending on me. I know how to go out there and make people laugh. I've been doing it since I was a teenager. I trust my instincts. I just go out and talk. A lot of the time I let the material come from the top of my head.

That's a lovely experience when you make an audience laugh. Then the nerves go away for a bit. And sometimes you do things then that you've never done before that are really funny.

I know how to make an audience laugh, 'cause I grew up on Third Rock from the Sun, week after week in front of audiences, making them laugh.

If I tell a joke on stage and the crowd laughs for a minute, I stand there for a minute and enjoy them laughing before I go on to the next joke. On TV, if I stand there for a minute while they laugh, I look like an idiot who can't remember the next joke.

I remember doing a lot of comedy. I always loved that feeling when you do something on stage and you can feel the vibe of the audience turn, and they start laughing. It's how you know something's not right, and how to fix it, or how to make the moment stronger or funnier.

When you're doing comedy on stage, it's great because you have the audience there and they're like another actor in the scene. You feed off of them, laugh. But in film when everyone's quiet, it's all about timing. But the key to that is to be authentic. Be in the moment, and if you play the moment truthfully, the humor will be there.

I knew already when I was seven years old, that I wanted to be on stage and entertain people. I sell laughs. Here, you got one for free!

Blood spurted from his nose. Okay, I couldn't help myself. I burst out laughing.

In comedy you feel you need to go back to the theatre every now and again, you feel you need to go back to an audience every now and again to see if you're still getting your craft right, making people laugh at the moments you think they should and that sort of thing.

When you're a young comedian the first thing you want to do is get a laugh.

Comedy is in my blood. Too bad it's not in my act.

In theater, it's just you and the audience. It's less of a popularity contest. It's just you and the audience, and they're laughing or they're not laughing, that's the only gauge you really have. But with TV and movies and everything, it's like "Well, did you get a meeting at so-and-so?" and "So-and-so's really hot right now," which is all the stuff I'm probably still not used to.

I found doing that kind of comedy without an audience is just... for me, it's almost impossible. You need the audience to do their half of the work.

I think being successful in comedy is being funny and making jokes - anything beyond that is the icing on the cake.

People run on and off the stage, but usually they're removed before they get to me. It's not really frightening. There's always the possibility that someone's going to take a potshot at you; you take that risk when you perform in front of thousands of people.