Margaret Cho Quotes

You really have no idea whether or not what you're writing is funny. In stand-up and sketch comedy, you know right away and you can make your changes accordingly.

But television, when I was doing it, was all about scoring. You had to make these jokes bang, do whatever you could to make the material really pop. And if it didn't, there was something wrong with the material, or with you.

When you improvise, you work off the laughs from the audience, but when you step on stage to do standup, it's silent.

You learn timing on the road. You learn structure and how to read an audience. You learn so much about the business of laughter that you can't learn on a set, because it's all on you. Sometimes you bomb, and you know not to tell that joke again... You just hope people find the humor in the awkwardness.

Usually, if I think something is really funny, I'm not gonna test it. I'll just test it when I'm onstage.

When you're doing stand-up, you can comment if something fails, get a laugh from that.

Sometimes an actor will stumble on the joke, and I'm right on them. Back it up before the audience hears the bad version of the joke, because humor is 90% surprise. If they know what's coming, they won't laugh as hard.

The test of a real comedian is whether you laugh at him before he opens his mouth.

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.

With comedy, it's really hard to tell if something's working on the page - you really need the actors to bring it alive. The scariest part is if people will laugh or not.

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.

The basic function of a comic is stand-up because it's so straightforward and simple. If the audience don't laugh, you didn't do your job. I've had some audiences where I didn't care if they laughed or not because they were either too drunk or stupid.

When you're a standup comic, you get up and you try stuff, and you're always kind of seeing how far you can push things.

All you have in comedy, in general, is just going with your instincts. You can only hope that other people think that what you think is funny is funny. I don't have an answer but I just try to plough straight ahead.

Doing drama is, in a sense, easier. In doing comedy, if you don't get that laugh, there's something wrong.

Comedy is not about appearance; it's about rockin' a mike. Are they laughing? That's the only test.

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.

Comedy is like math - you can check your answer because you know you've gotten it right if you get a laugh. It just makes sense to me. I feel like because I've had to keep that tool in my box for so long, I'm ready to show it off a bit.

When you are doing stand-up comedy, you are the writer, producer, director, sometimes bouncer.

Here's the thing, with comedy - and I learned this from Will Ferrell - you can't be ashamed. If you're doing comedy, you have to fully commit to the joke. Shame is not part of it. If you act shy or uncomfortable about your body, that makes the audience shy and uncomfortable. And in a comedy you just want them to loosen up and laugh.

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

Writing your own jokes, you just kind of keep working on something until you think it might work, and then you try it out and hope for the best.

If you play it straight it's funny - the best comedy is always played straight down the middle. The adjustment is understanding from the screenplay that a moment is hilarious.

You say a line and you wait for them to laugh, then you say another line and you wait... It felt weird to me. But it's interesting and the energy is almost like theatre, I suppose, with all the people there.

Stand up is really fun because if I think of a joke or a funny idea, then I can just go and tell some people and if they laugh, they laugh right away.