T. J. Miller Quotes

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

If I'm in a town for very long, usually I'll work out in the comedy club just to keep my chops or work out the beats on new stuff.

You have to do stand-up quite a long time before you learn how to do it well.

With stand-up, it doesn't matter who you are. If the audience claps because they love your movies, that clapping stops after five seconds, and then it's your job to make them laugh.

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.

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.

I'd been to the Comedy Store, and I loved the terror of it and the way the best comedians could control the crowd. What confidence that would give you, if you could somehow survive.

If I'm not in the theatre, I'm in an open mic night or doing a guest set at the Comedy Club, or whatever, just trying to develop stuff.

I've been doing stand-up since I was 19. There have been times I've had to step away because of my schedule, but now I'm able to go out and do theaters and not smoky little bars.

Don't edit yourself too much. Don't be afraid of looking stupid, 'cool' is so rarely funny I think. And just do it! Do as many gigs as you possibly can, and watch as many gigs as you possibly can. You'll get the rhythm of it in your head and make lovely friends.

I always try to improve my stand-up game, it's very important for me.

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

I don't write anything. It's all done onstage, which is why I always tell younger comics that they just have to go do it. You have to get up, talk, and take a thought or a word and just expound, and you find it in there. I don't sit down and write.

I continue to do standup because there's a connection with a live audience - there are skills that you do learn as a standup comedian that help you on a set.

If you want to do standup, you have to go on stage. That's the only way to get good - stage times.

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

I mean, all alternative comedy is are comedians that have being doing it for so long, for so long, that they were relaxed enough to start becoming personal on stage.

You have to do stand-up quite a long time before you learn how to do it well. It was probably years before I was confident enough in stand-up that I was able to talk about the things I wanted to talk about, the way I wanted to talk about them.

Not everyone can be as successful a performer as myself, who gave 10 great performances the first time I ever did comedy, and then toiled in obscurity for years.

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.

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 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.

The really good stand up comedians can be angry but relatable, and they have interestingly humanizing personalities. Their observational skills are far greater than mine, so I'll just stick to reading lines off a page.

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

Little did I know that earning a living at stand-up is the hardest thing you can do. But once I started doing it, I just loved it, and I realized that I was actually kinda good at it, and then that was it.