Hannibal Buress Quotes

I never wanted to be road comic.

I have always wanted to do comedy.

I've been doing stand-up since '89.

But long story short, I didn't start doing stand-up because I wanted to have a TV show or be an actor or even wanted to write sketch comedy. I got into stand-up because I love stand-up.

Stand-up is the foundation to my career. It's what I started out doing.

You know, my first album, some of those jokes I'd done for twelve years because I couldn't throw 'em out.

I think I probably would have gone into stand-up.

I started pursuing stand-up comedy in 12th grade.

Whenever a young comic asks me for advice I only have two things to say. One is to try and do what you think is genuinely funny and the other is just do loads of gigs.

Jesse has opened for me extensively on the road so I’ve seen him do hundreds of sets. He is always super funny, has tons of material and the crowds love him. Bottom line, Jesse Joyce is a great comedian.

I always had one goal, and that was to be a real funny stand-up comic, and that's pretty much what I'm doing. And everything else is kind of like gravy - TV, movies.

There are tons of things I'd love to do. I want to do comedy. It's not that I don't want to play a superhero, but I got to play Conan and Drogo.

I've never written jokes. I mean, I'll write things on a piece of paper and riff on them onstage.

I'm not a comedy writer, I'm a comedian, so I only write stuff that I would want to say.

I love doing comedy, I really do. It was perhaps my first love. And I think, as an actor, you're young and you do school plays and the reason you go 'I might do more of this' is because you make people laugh in a school play. You don't go and do Hamlet when you're nine and go: "I feel people were really moved out there!" You do a silly voice and everyone laughs and you go: "Ooh, that feels quite nice. I might make a life out of this!"

I love writing stand-up so much and tinkering and looking for ideas.

If you can't write your own material, you have very little chance of making it as a comedian.

In my stand up, I think I try to be less energetic because I feel embarrassed about how much enthusiasm I have. There's something about acting like I don't care, or if I act like I haven't spent enough time on it, it seems to go better. If I act like I'm really trying to sell it, it doesn't go as well.

I started out as a stand-up comedian. And that's what I'm most comfortable doing.

If I were to just focus on stand-up, I could actually, paradoxically enough, be home way more, because I would leave on a Friday, go do a couple theaters Friday, Saturday, maybe Sunday, come home.

Stand-up comedy seems like a terrifying thing. Objectively. Before anyone has done it, it seems like one of the most frightening things you could conceive, and there's just no shortcut - you just have to do it.

Being a stand-up comic, this isn't a stepping-stone for me; it's what I do, and this is what I'm always going to do. And even if I do a TV show, the only reasons to do a TV show is to get more people to know me to come out to my stand-up shows.

Well I was much too practical to presume to have a career in comedy.

I will always do stand-up, even if my acting career takes off. Stand-up is my life.

The first time I did stand-up I was 17, and I was really a stand-up once I was 19 in New York, and now I'm 41, and I still feel like I haven't found myself onstage. Earlier in my career, I was really tight, really together, and knew who I was and I was confident.