Aziz Ansari Quotes

Jokes that make me laugh out loud when I write them almost always bomb. I have no idea why.

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.

I think comedy is the most difficult thing in the world, I really do.

I have a very high respect for professional comedians. What they do astonishes me. You have to be really smart and absorb everything, repackage it, bring it back to the person, and make them laugh at themselves. I can make people laugh during my talks because they didn't come to have me make them laugh. It's added value. So my job is way easier than that of a professional comic.

Woody Allen - nobody has been a better joke teller than him - and even in his great films, it's always coming out of the character. If you don't have that, jokes are just empty and I think that people rely too much on jokes.

I started out in stand-up, so it's very satisfying to make people laugh, but it usually means at your own expense.

Now, I think the people who are still doing stand-up are doing it because they love stand-up.

When anything doesn't hit with a huge laugh, as comics, it feels like, Oh no, oh no, we're sinking.

I don't think I've ever died on stage. I've had jokes that died on stage. I've told a joke and absolutely nothing. They didn't know it was the end of the joke.

It didn't have to be a newfound respect for the craft, I knew that it's notoriously difficult and frightens a lot of people off. I don't think anyone knows quite who to attribute it to, but the dying actor who says: "dying is easy, comedy is hard." I hear it.

I have a funny sense of humor. If I was a comedian and I was up on stage, people would think that's funny, because I'm a funny comedian. I'm an entertainer.

As a guy comedian, your special is probably the closest thing to the excitement of a wedding day. It's your first one, and you want it to be perfect, and you want it to mean something. You want it to look good.

Not necessarily in the beginning, thinking I would have a career in comedy, but I was always interested in making people laugh.

I think comedy is difficult, and I'm amazed so many people want to do it. I'll be buying jeans and somebody will say, "I'm a comedian" - the guy selling you the jeans. The desire to be a comedian is weird. I found it weird myself to want to be one; I was a schoolboy when I wanted to be one but I didn't know how to do it. That was 50 years ago, so times have changed greatly. There seems to be a long line of people desperate to do it and most of them are quite good.

I remember I used to go to The Laugh Factory and just goof off onstage, and then I'd see Dane Cook. He did a bit about his Mom making the bed in the summertime when he was a kid. He just said "Vroom!" and threw the sheet up in the air and the sheet would just stay over the bed for like a minute and a half. All he had were his arms out, but I could see the sheet. And he didn't do anything. He just kept it there. And I went, "I have to write more."

It's good to do stand-up. It kind of wakes you up and makes you feel like you're doing something. You got the crowd right there. That's all fun.

I had a couple of decent laughs on Townies, but for the most part, delivering a joke that you just know is not funny is hard.

In a way, comedy is like sex. The more noise you hear, the better you think you're doing.

Well, anybody can be a straight man if he hears well. You just have to wait for laughs. A straight man just repeats the questions and the comedian gets the laughs and you just wait for them and don't let them die completely at the tail end of the laugh.

Over the past 50 years Bob Hope employed 88 joke writers who supplied him with more than one million gags, and he still couldn't make me laugh.

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

I think comedy's just about being interested in comedy and what makes people laugh and experimenting.

It was one of Hulu's first original shows to really go out there. Now a year has passed, and the second season is getting a great response. I think the show [Difficult People] itself creatively has evolved, has gotten much richer and tighter.

It was always the most fun thing in the world to think of a joke area and talk about it with someone like Jim Carrey, and then he would get on stage fearlessly and tear the house down. That's something I always enjoyed. It also allowed me to not be terrified.

I come up with my jokes by thinking of a topic.