Dana Carvey Quotes

What happened was, in my final year of university in Australia, there was a campus comedy competition, and I felt like it was something I could do. I won that competition, and I kept doing it, and I couldn't get a job in law. So I just kept doing comedy.

To succeed in comedy you ultimately have to put in the hours and get lucky - The amount of people who are able to break through is so small a fraction of the amount of people trying.

Everyone who wants to make it in comedy goes to L.A., so a million comedians fight for time on three stages. If you get in there in New York, you're working eight times a night sometimes. Who's going to be funny, the guy who works once a week, or the guy working eight times a night?

Obviously those who burn to be professional jesters mean that they want to be successful comedians. And those are always an elite, microscopic portion of the population. But oh, how they try.

Somewhat naively, I entered the BBC's 'New Talent Competition,' believing it was for people who had never tried comedy before. I remember sitting in the dressing room before the show and hearing the other acts - who all knew one another - talking to Rhod Gilbert about how he must be about ready to go 'full-time' as a comic.

I was writing stand up comedy for TV for around 5 years and just wanted to attempt it myself. Vir Das started an amateur comedians' night in Bombay in 2009 and I went for the very first one. It was a competition and I won the first prize.

I decided I'd try my hand as a stand-up comedian, as I loved making people laugh, and appeared at the Latitude Festival, won the 2007 Laughing Horse New Act of the Year, and was a nominee for winner of the 2007 So You Think You're Funny competition.

When I first graduated college, I told my parents I'd try to pursue comedy for the first year or two, and if it didn't work out, I'd put my nose to the grindstone and try to find a job somehow. I went to UCB, and it clicked with me.

In the stand-up comedy top, there's room for everyone - if you're good, there's room for everyone. You'll put on your own show - no one casts you. You cast your own show as a stand-up comedian. When you get good at stand-up comedy you book a theater and if people show up, people show up. If people don't show up, people don't show up. You don't have a director or a casting agent or anybody saying if you're good enough - the audience will decide.

I'm looking to be the next comedy mogul.

The biggest piece of advice that I give young comedians is: If it's your goal to get where I'm at, go do something else. Because you'll never get here. Never. The odds are so bad. Because not only do you have to be a really, really strong comedian but you also have to be lucky. And most people don't get that combination.

Every comic is taught that you're supposed to have a great seven-minute set and then get a sitcom. And I don't want to get the sitcom.

I got into comedy at exactly the right moment.

I didn't really discover that I had a knack for comedy until I landed 'Married w/ Children.'

When I first started doing stand-up back in Philadelphia, the idea of being a professional writer was completely beyond me. It didn't even occur to me that that was something you could do.

See, I'm totally fearless. I got my chops in the most, like, dangerous comedy atmosphere. If you can make it in New York, you can really do stand-up anywhere.

The house I've bought in London, the holidays, everything has been bought from making people laugh, and if you'd said to me when I was 14 that's how I was going to make my living, I would have smiled from ear to ear.

Certainly, when I left New Zealand, there was no career there as a comedian. I was doing more live gigs than anyone, and I was maybe doing three a week. Even then, it would often be the same people in the audience, going, 'I saw you on Tuesday, mate!'

I would not have succeeded as a comedian had I not had some hugely lucky breaks.

There's [John Mulaney Show] jokes that I have in stand up that I wouldn't try to put in, I would try to have someone just speak extemporaneously in the middle of a scene about an episode of "Law and Order" or something.

I've spent the last few years just really actively pursuing comedy and that's something I always wanted to know how to do.

They all laughed when I said I wanted to be a comedian. Well, they're not laughing now.

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.

Comedy is crowded. There are hundreds of comedians in every place in the world.

When you're a comic, it's like being born gay. It's what you want to do every night when your other friends are out at night going to parties.