Chris Tucker Quotes

I could never do stand-up because it's that thing of having to get up on stage. And out of every 10 jokes you tell, nine of them have to get a really good response.

My stand-up is quite good now, people say. It's just like a big conversation each time. Every gig is a rehearsal.

At this point, I feel fairly comfortable in terms of performance. I think having a sketch background actually helps a lot. Because my background is acting, and stand-up, in a lot of ways, is acting.

When I began doing stand-up, it took me a long time to get an hour's worth of material together.

Stand-up comedy is something that you have to strive to do, multiple times a night, every night, to be good.

Every time I see a live performance of something, I'm like, 'I want to be doing that!'

Stand-up, for me, is really more of an addiction, so you have to feed the beast whenever you can.

The best shows I play, I almost don't even remember off the stage.

Onstage, there's no hiding; you either can or can't act. There's no second take.

When you're a stand-up, you play in front of 600 people, and it's all about timing. I could never do stand-up comedy; it would be way too hard for me.

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.

I've done a lot of stage in my life, but I never had to dominate a stage for three hours.

I don't think I would be a good actor! People enjoyed 'Dancing With the Stars' because I was myself, and every time they told me to say something, I would say my own words, so I don't think I could follow a script well!

Beyond any role that I ever had, really early on as a stand-up, I would see actors decide to try it and they would bomb miserably. What I realized was that stand-up, acting and writing are all their own disciplines.

Stand-up keeps you alive. It is definitely the most specialized field in comedy because you need to stay sharp and well-tuned every night.

You don't really know a song until you play it live.

There's no real preparing at home for stand-up. You just go and you just do it.

It's almost like, when someone plays poker for the first time, they might be a professional poker player out of ignorance, just accidentally winning. That was how it felt in my first stand-up appearance.

It's a constant challenge to get your arrangement and musical expression across to a new audience, especially when you're playing live every night like we are.

Bad improv happens with people who are inexperienced with each other and don't know the craft that well. But bad stand-up is something that could happen to someone at any level in their career.

If you're a comic, you don't have a rehearsal room, you rehearse on stage. My main concern is remembering everything.

I left school and couldn't find acting work, so I started going to clubs where you could do stand-up. I've always improvised, and stand-up was this great release. All of a sudden, it was just me and the audience.

The only way to stay sharp is to do live shows. There is no part-time comedy.

Impressions are still kind of hard for me and not what I love to do the most, but with characters, I think there's an element of fearlessness. You try to figure out the best reading and wording of the jokes before the show, and then you just really have to go hard.

I did a standup show called 'Show Me the Funny,' so from that I got some TV stuff and people would book me for gigs. I wasn't really good enough at that point, so had to catch up with expectations.