Drew Carey Quotes

I loved George Carlin and Dean Martin. I was one of those kids who had every comedy album.

It went from Bob Newhart to Flip Wilson to Bill Cosby to Richard Pryor to George Carlin to Cheech and Chong. I had all these records.

One of my greatest inspirations for stand-up was Jonathan Winters. He was a genius. One thing about him, and also Lenny Bruce, is that they were in the tradition of the one-man show. That's why Richard Pryor was so great, and George Carlin, too. They prowled the stage, they used voices, they were really talents.

My dad loved comedians, especially George Jessel, and he loved Henny Youngman and Buddy Hackett.

I'm not a fan of stand-up comedy, personally. But some of them are incredibly skilled.

The ability to workshop in stand-up comedy is incomparable to any art form, in my opinion.

I listened to George Carlin when I was a kid and knew every word of his routines.

I love comedy and I would write things to myself as an exercise in writing. I didn't do well for years, and I quit. I started to break down why I was afraid and started to look at people I admired, like Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Freddie Prinze, George Carlin and all.

When I was younger, I listened to the greats: Winters, Mel and Carl, Nichols and May, Pryor, Carlin, Klein, Berman and lots of Lenny Bruce albums. But once I started doing fairly well, I didn't want to hear anybody's jokes or premises.

Show me one guy or woman as funny as Rodney Dangerfield or as good as George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, or Joan Rivers. There are a lot of good comics out there, no doubt, but as far as the quality of the comics goes, I think what you have is a bunch of situational comics.

I wanted to be a comedian.

I did stand-up. I loved George Carlin and Steve Martin.

I really can't pinpoint the one moment when I said I want to be a comic.

Lewis Black taught me stand-up.

Dad had a music store, and he'd often bring home comedy albums that I would listen to. I started listening to Bob Newhart and Bill Cosby, and developing taste. They really influenced my style of comedy.

When I was a bit older I had all of the George Carlin records, all of the Steve Martin records, all of the Cheech and Chong records and all of the Richard Pryor records.

Specifically in stand-up, I love jokes. I love short, structured ideas and a punchline.

I learned from the guys before me - Bill Cosby, Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, Richard Pryor, just to name a few. These are guys that let it all hang out. What they lived is what they took to the stage.

Stand-up comedy is an art form and it dies unless you expand it.

I didn't really want to be a comedian.

I have performed my one-man show '700 Sundays' over 400 times now. There were only two times that I can honestly say I was nervous. The first was when I knew Mel Brooks was in the audience, and the second was when Sid Caesar came.

I always tell comics you got to hang with your stand-up.

People ask me about my influences and I say all the comedians in the 1970s and Dave Allen was a massive influence and a very big influence on a lot of modern comics.

I thought all comedy was stupid. I went to watch a friend do stand-up and I thought absolutely everyone was terrible.

I never was obsessed with comedians. When I was a little, little boy, I'd watch, like, George Carlin on 'Dinah Shore.'