Jackie Mason Quotes

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.

It's that I wasn't suited to do the kind of comedy that these people were coming to hear - mainstream comedy.

It seems like when I first started, people got into comedy because they wanted to be good comedians.

I've seen other comics, with great pleasure, watching their own specials, and I don't know how or why they do it.

If I tried to do comedy for the rest of my career, I would not be very successful.

I did so many open mics. I would write jokes on Twitter constantly, and then slowly, over time, open mics turned into shows. If you can get a joke to work at an open mic, it's a good joke.

When I was doing comedy in New York, before I was in movies, I was never known as the deadpan actress. I was just a comedienne.

The only honest art form is laughter, comedy. You can't fake it... try to fake three laughs in an hour - ha ha ha ha ha - they'll take you away, man. You can't.

So many of these comics are just frustrated singers or actors - they want to get a gig doing a sitcom. It's paint-by-the-numbers comedy, lame joke-telling. They're drawn to it as a career move.

Those early days of comedy are when you get addicted to it.

For me, the way I stay consistent is through stand-up comedy.

I started performing as a stand-up comedian on my own in the mid-1990s.

Comedians have to write to survive because you don't get cast for your beauty.

I found out I had a real love for comedy and comedy writing. The logic was, there weren't too many female comedians, so I thought I might as well try a field that had fewer competitors than the field I was in, which was acting, singing and dancing.

I never thought I'd end up doing comedy, but actually, it's been something I've really relished the challenge of and ended up doing quite a bit of.

My job is mostly to entertain and be funny.

I have no qualifications to do anything else and there weren't any formal application forms you had to fill in for stand-up, so I thought I'd give that a twist.

I kind of thought that stand-up comedy would suffer from the Internet because people seem to know more about the craft of stand-up than ever before. I thought it would seem trite. Kind of like if you know more about magicians, you wouldn't love them.

I wanted to make a living, but I really was not interested in money at all. I was interested in being a great comedian.

I was influenced by every comedian I ever saw work. That's the only way you learn how to do it.

Podcasts feature comedians being as funny as they can be in a non-censored situation. It's really akin to standup in a way. When you go see a comedian in standup, that is the most pure, unadulterated form of their art.

When you're in comedy, people always come up and say, 'Oh, it must be so hard.' It really isn't hard unless you're not good at it. If you can do it, its really kind of fun and easy.

In Manhattan, I often do two or three or more shows a night, so I'm always working on new material.

I had no desire to be a stand-up comic until I decided to do it.

I never predicted that I'd be a comedian, but it was something that came so naturally to me. I just felt good doing it.