Erik Griffin Quotes

I think I probably would have gone into stand-up.

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

I spent 25 years as a stand-up comedian.

I will always do stand-up, even if my acting career takes off. Stand-up is my life.

Comedy is an amazing calling. Once you get that first laugh, it's hard to turn away. Then, of course, you're hooked and you have to learn how to survive in the business.

It takes many years to be a great comedian.

The only way to stay sharp is to do live shows. There is no part-time comedy.

People who want to do stand-up from the start - I mean that's an extremely self-centred thing to want, isn't it?

There's a lot of open mics, a lot of comedy clubs. Whatever money I could make was OK with me. As long as I could pay the rent, eat food, and tell jokes, doing it was good enough for me.

I started comedy in 2006. I didn't even think it was a thing I could do.

From the age of 14, I remember thinking I wanted to be a comedian. But that was like saying I wanted to be an astronaut. It felt like a million miles away, something I could never do, but would be great to.

I was always just like, 'Standups are making it up.' A lot of people have that myth about standup. And so it wasn't until I was in college for theater school in Boston that I realized I can actually start going to open mics and figuring this out.

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

When I was in third grade I taught myself ventriloquism... What's hard is to learn to be an entertainer and make people laugh. I was a few years out of college before I felt I had enough material. Then in 1988 I moved to L.A. and started to do some shows at comedy clubs.

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

I've been a comedian since I was fourteen. But I've never really been a CEO.

When I started out in comedy, it was common knowledge that it took about 10 years to get good. And that was okay because it took you about 9 years to get on television.

I was a standup comic, which doesn't necessarily mean you interact with people all that much. In fact when I did shows, I wouldn't talk to the audience very much. Then my friend offered me a radio show, and I thought, you know, I'll try talking to people and see what kind of interviewer I was.

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

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

I always wanted to be a comedian, but I wasn't sure how you do that.

I'm a stand-up comic. Anything else I do besides that is a plus, but stand-up comedy is what I do, it's what I've been doing and it's what I'm going to keep doing.

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

I never thought I'd do comedy, ever, in a million years. I always thought comedy was just for fun - to me, the real stuff was the real dramatic stuff. Now I know it's all valuable. There's a real excitement, a good feeling when you can make people laugh.