Jim Jefferies Quotes

I really admire stand-up, and I think I would have loved to learn how to do it. I think it's terrifying and thrilling. A really cool thing to do. It's a dying art, in a way.

I never want to cannibalize my act, and I'm really excited that I am going to be able to perform new material. I'm not a huge fan of repeating jokes, and I don't really do any of my old material from old stand-up acts.

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.

We then took a shortened version of what we'd been doing in the pubs, with the best gags and things like that, out to cabaret clubs and things in the north of England for six weeks. And we became a big success.

No, I never really set out to be a stand up. I wanted to be a writer of some sort. I thought I'd do a bit of stand up and hopefully that will lead to stuff and little did I know it kind of snowballed. Before I knew it I was doing stand up 300 nights a year.

As a stand-up comic, you have to do the road.

I can work as a writer, but I wanted to do stand-up.

I never used to tell jokes on stage. Now I'm cutting up jokes all night long.

Some people use stand-up to get something else in their careers, but it's truly the art form of stand-up I love.

I'm doing a lot of stand-up, but not like when you're living in New York and you can do three sets a night and it's your life, and you sleep all day and you wake up and you eat with a bunch of other comics and then get ready for the night.

I'm really more prolific than most stand-ups. My act changes. I do fold in new experiences, new observations, whatever you want to call it.

When you're doing stand-up, you can comment if something fails, get a laugh from that.

Stand-up came out of three things. Frustration, necessity and arrogance. I didn't have a great career ahead of me in anything. Someone literally said to me, 'You should try stand-up,' and took me to a venue.

Anybody with a sharp brain and a mic can become a comedian, but there's a need to move beyond it. The audience wants to witness the marriage of theatre, comedy and something more.

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.

I think as a standup performer you have to feel the audience. So the audience kind of dictates what they get, you know?

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.

When people come to see my stand-up, they get a chance to see my characters interact with each other.

If you're a comedian, you are looking for material in daily life.

Once I started doing stand-up, everything fell into place. That was when I started acting more; I felt like I'd found my place in the business.

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

I always want to go back and do stand-up; I like the freedom.

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

My stand-up has always been very character-based. I'm not really the kind of person that's like, 'Hey, here's what's on my mind! Tip your waitress!' I would create the jokes based on the character I was playing. It was always a performance-based thing for me.

Comedians walk out, get a feel for the crowd. If it's not going good, we change directions. If we got to drag your momma into this thing, we will. Whatever we got to do.