Bo Burnham Quotes

If nobody comes to your shows, then it's modern dance. If everybody comes to your shows and no one likes it, is that ballet? I don't know.

I've done performances in movies that I was immensely proud of and the movies didn't take off like a rocket at Cape Canaveral, it didn't take off.

I guess that I was always considered a little too weird for the standup clubs and probably too jokey for doing performance art and those places where those are done.

What I've created comedically owes a lot to my ignorance of comedy and love of making theatre stuff.

'Iceman' covers a bigger scope than 'Long Day's Journey.' But they're both fabulous pieces of work. 'Iceman' is like a symphony. It's got all the movements, all these different voices. 'Long Day's Journey' is more like a beautiful string quartet.

The more you work in this business as a comedian, the closer you get to just being yourself onstage, on camera, the more well received you are.

I just want to keep doing my comedy work because that's what I do. I made a name for myself playing other characters.

The nature of being an artist in any field, but specifically in comedy, is that almost as soon as you finish something you hate it, and it feels dated, and not your best work.

My experience of performing in Gurgaon has been very satisfying.

When I'm singing my songs on stage, I feel like I'm doing a rock show, even though I don't think all my music is particularly straight up rock.

I always need a reason to do something on stage, for me. I am not judging anyone: there is not a good way; there is not a bad way. You just have to justify everything.

The pre-chorus always flows and the chorus is always a little bit harder for me because I put pressure on myself. I didn't know that there was a proper way to do these things, so I just write what sounds good to me in my ears and then I hope to God that someone else likes it too.

The thing is, I've been writing for a long time now, trying to be a poet for the last 40 years, and it's still very difficult not to second-guess myself when reading my own work.

Acting is very subjective and one can't be deterred by what people think of your work.

It's tough to do comedy. After 'Mister', my inhibitions with respect to comedy have come down.

Ah, 'Kismet,' or Carry On Camel, as we called it. I thought the show was shocking. It was the worst designed production ever but it's got a fantastic score. It's not an awfully good book though. You really have to work hard to eke out any laughs from that script.

I think theater is very much my natural home. But the truth is that the older I've got, and the more I've written film and television, I find it incredibly hard to write theater.

I love and enjoy vocal performance, but I also have a huge passion for comedy and improv.

It's not like we set out to antagonize the audience in any way. We're just presenting our music; it's really much more innocent.

Acting is like lifting a 400-pound feather. It's a feather, how hard could it be? And yet, you go to lift it and it's heavy. For that reason, I love it, because it's very hard and difficult and challenging and obviously I want to learn more.

At the end of the day, I love singing, whatever the style might be.

It wasn't so much figuring out my voice comedically, because that was always pretty clear. It was more about performing and being a good, watchable performer.

In my shows, I always try to incorporate music because it's the most natural way to set a tone. So if I want to do a show about depression, I use the opera. If I want to do a show about greed, I use spoken word. If I want to do a show about the injustice that's taking place in the world, I might play Sam Cooke.

If I had the gift of Jerry Seinfeld, of Bill Cosby, of Lewis Black, these instinctively brilliant comic minds, then you go that route! But you gotta know your limitations. I'm more of an actor, more of a process guy. I did Tom Snyder, just as Danny Aykroyd did on 'SNL.' I did it in the club.

For comics, Edinburgh makes no financial or medical sense. Get an audience; that's the first task. Once the punters are in, simply make them laugh for an hour, and then sweat on the critics.