John C. Reilly Quotes

Everyone knows the feeling where you're in the pub and you make your mates laugh. It's awesome, you feel like you rock. That's what comedians want with a bit of extra ego.

I think comedy I've learned is really just about relaxing and trusting yourself and allowing yourself to fail.

The violence or the vaudeville style of comedy is a technique all by itself. You get up there, and you are a comedian, and you're doing one thing. That is, you're going to make the audience laugh.

I was fooling everyone by surrounding myself with funny people. But then I put myself out there - writing my own sketches, going on stage with nobody surrounding me - and for some reason people were still laughing.

I wanted to be a comedian.

I like the purity of stand-up because it is all about whether people laugh at your jokes. Either they laugh or they don't.

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.'

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 always knew I was quite good at getting laughs. At school, I loved having a ready audience if I made a cheeky remark.

The thing with the comedian is you can make all the jokes you want and not every joke it going to be a winner, and not every joke is going to land, there'll be some that somebody doesn't laugh at, but that's just part of the deal.

As a comic, you are trying to please people in some way - to make them laugh.

Just to talk in front of people is scary. And now you gotta learn how to be funny, and now you gotta learn how to make people laugh at what you think is funny. That's not easy.

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.

The only honest art form is laughter, comedy. You can't fake it... try to fake three laughs in an hour - ha ha ha ha ha - they'll take you away, man. You can't.

Jackie Gleason said that comedy is the most exacting form of dramatic art, because it has an instant critic: laughter.

I'm always trying to make myself laugh. I'm the most enthusiastic audience I'm likely to find, so if it doesn't make me smile then it probably won't work on you. The jokes that only make me shrug get cut.

And you can't hide in a comedy scene either. You have to give in to the scene and commit.

We don't apologize for a joke. We are comics. We are here to make you laugh. If you don't get it, then don't watch us.

I've been a stand-up comedian for years, and I can be silly.

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 will always love to perform standup comedy.

Often when you are starting out in comedy, you will find that people will laugh at the things you didn't think were funny. It's important to pay attention also to what people are laughing at when you are just talking in regular conversation. Often that is when you are truly being yourself.

I really loved what I was doing being creative and being funny as a stand-up comedian.

When someone goes, 'Oh, this group is really pissed off at what you said,' there's not a piece of my body that goes, 'Sweet!' That means I did it wrong. I'm just trying to make people laugh.