Aisha Tyler Quotes

I grew up watching stand-ups and thought it was so entertaining and unique - you didn't see that as a job description anywhere.

I'm a comedian, and I decided I wanted to be a comedian when I was eight years old watching old Saturday Night Live episodes. I never decided to be a rapper because I'm not a rapper.

Though part of me had always wanted to be a comedian, another part of me had always wanted to be Bryant Gumbel or Dan Rather.

You try various things when you're growing up. I was an attache in the Foreign Service for a while and then I drove a bulldozer, but neither of those panned out for me so it had to be stand-up.

I'm always doing comedy and will never hit up a 9-to-5 desk job.

I've been doing stand-up since '89.

Stand-up will always be my first love, and it has been the primary way I've expressed myself since I was 17.

I never wanted to be a model. I never wanted to be a serious actress. I started off doing comedy. I did a stand-up comedy camp at the Laugh Factory, and I started out on Nickelodeon.

I'm funny. I'm a comedian. I'm not a clown.

I wasn't planning on being a comedian; I just liked to laugh. Somebody said I should do it and that's how I started.

I was at college doing performing arts, and just spending all my time mucking about, and the lecturers thought I would be pretty good at stand-up, so I gave it a whirl.

I worked as a comedian for 23 years, 51 weeks a year.

I started doing stand-up when I was 16, my junior year in high school. My two friends and I would sit at home watching stand-up. They kept saying I should try it, and so I did.

I began working on stage in Atlanta when I was 3, doing a dance act with the Ragamuffins of Rhythm. Later I became a juvenile straight man for the older comedians. After that I worked out a stand-up act.

I started comedy as a hobby with no intention of making it my career.

I loved stand-up, but I never thought you could do it as a job.

Because you make me laugh don't make you a comic. A comedian is a person who, that's how they make their living.

Not necessarily in the beginning, thinking I would have a career in comedy, but I was always interested in making people laugh.

I got into comedy because I wanted to get into writing.

I think both of us [ with Steve Oram], once we decided to do comedy, knew that we would have to come to London to do that.

I do feel good doing them [family-friendly movies], but it's not going to be my way of life. I'm a comedian.

I always wanted to be a comedian, even when I was a little kid. I had a funny father who was in the news business, by the way. He was a radio news guy. So the news was always in my house, and funny was always in my house. It was sort of just baked into the DNA that I would do this for a living, but I can remember being less than 10 years old and dreaming about being a comedian.

I've not really been angling to be a comedian. I knew comics and I loved them and I loved being funny, but I didn't understand the whole concept of becoming one. My first couple of times on stage, I was like, "This is what I'm doing for sure." I was so excited.

I really wanted to, but I just didn't understand how people became comedians. I kind of thought it was something you were born into. And so I wanted to be a veterinarian or an architect. I wanted to be in a band, and for some reason I could understand how you could be in a band because I had guitars and all my friends played music. Comedy was a secret want, but it wasn't anything I pursued.

I'm just going to keep doing comedy because I don't know what else to do. I have no other applicable skills.