Ralphie May Quotes

I've never thought that what I do as an actor does anything for anybody, other than making them laugh once in a while.

I've made films that I've given all I had to, that no one has seen. The bottom line is I want to work and I want someone to enjoy it.

I just want to do films which I enjoy doing and the audience will too like it watching.

I enjoy the music I make because I have to - if I didn't, I wouldn't want to make it, and I wouldn't want it to be heard by other people.

I'm not in this to make money. I would not have sold my soul to be on 'American Idol.'

I don't think there's a person in the industry that wouldn't love to work with Dave Chappelle. That's a no-brainer.

Films are made for audience's appreciation but films are also made for artistic satisfaction.

I'm so lucky that I found comedy and that I get to do it for a living.

Before stand-up, I didn't even have an agent. Once I started doing stand-up - boom. I got an agent. In fact, I got three agents. I got a lawyer. Now I get taken seriously.

I would never be rude about somebody else in my profession because we all do this same thing. We're just trying to make people laugh.

Hollywood forgets easily. I want to be fulfilled and challenged.

You can't please everyone. There's always going to be someone disappointed, so you might as well make yourself happy and Be You.

We are entertainers. We have to give our audience a good time. If my name serves that purpose, if that brings a smile on your face, then I think it is good and my job has been done.

I love to entertain and make people laugh.

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.

But I really believe that if you have the ability, there is an obligation to make people laugh

To me, if you are in the same building with Peter Sellers or John Cleese, or any of those guys and holding your own making other people laugh, that's a compliment.

It'd be negligent to say that I don't want to be at the top of the charts. Of course I do, it's proof that your song is being heard. But I think it's more about the work for me and being proud of what I'm doing in music than what people think about my music. I want to like my music before you like it. I don't want to sell anything that I don't really like. I don't want to sell myself short just to get to the top of the charts. It doesn't feel that great. Feeling proud of your work feels greater than being at the top of the charts.

If you can make just one person laugh, then you are already doing better than Tony Danza.

I feel things can always be funny, but that's probably because I have some kind of leftover childhood need to make people laugh. For somebody like me, that's the thing you excel at.

At the beggining of my career, for me the comedy circuit was a combination of desperation and the fact that it was something I could do. I sort of meandered and really had no idea what I was going to do with my life. I had a go at stand-up, and I was sort of okay at it. I'd say I'm the opposite of someone that has the urge to stand in front of strangers and make them laugh, but the idea of getting up and telling a story and people finding it amusing always appealed to me. So I'd say it was probably more about that than anything.

I think you have to satisfy yourself first and foremost. There have been records I've been really, really pleased with that haven't connected with people. But I felt good about them. If you're making music, you must want to turn other people on to it, whether you're number one in the charts or number 60. I don't know, that's a commercial thing, but just the fact that other people like you... there's no point in making music, otherwise. Otherwise you might as well make it in your bedroom and leave it there.

I'm much more interested in making people laugh than getting applause breaks.

I knew I wanted to be in show business so I took the path of least resistance. I loved comedy. But you never know you are funny until people laugh. It's just what I was interested in. I could make people laugh, I guess, but doing it at school and doing it onstage are very different things.

I always made people laugh, and everybody wanted me to sit at the table with them. I don't joke as much as I used to, but I can still be a little comedian every now and then.