Keenen Ivory Wayans Quotes

I call it 'new forms'. When you're starting out, they ask you to do four or five minute sets, but once you're a headliner, you do like 90 minutes. I try to think of different things to divvy up the show, like doing drawings, playing music... I gotta carry the show, that's the problem.

The Comedy Store - all three rooms were filled with 800 people in the room. And during that time, all these guys and some women, but mostly guys who weren't funny were doing stand up for a living; they weren't accountants, they were making $30-$50 grand a year on the road, or more.

I think, as a comedian, the funniest you can be is with people you know, and [whom] you've known for years, in a pub. That's as funny as you get, and so the aim [while stand-up] is to get that funny on stage with 5,000 strangers, to get that funny in a room where people shouldn't be listening but they are.

I moved from acting to stand-up because castings are just about what you look like. It doesn't matter if you can act or not. In comedy, no one cares what you look like.

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

I love doing stand-up, and the more you do outside of stand-up to raise your profile, the better your stand-up becomes in terms of the quality of gigs.

It's a great time to be a comedian because you've got so much more control. You can say what you want to. I think in the old days with the studio system the performer was a bit of an afterthought. You can be a wildcard on the internet. But if you put something on the internet once it's out there it's out there for life.

I think most people that do comedy write for themselves. I don't think there is any other way you can do it, really. Otherwise it would be quite cynical.

I think I could have a funnier, more economic sets. But that's the comedy I do. And I understand if people aren't interested in it and would rather listen to someone else. But I'll never understand the anger people have toward me.

Your only guidepost is your own instinct and judicious editing. In my stand-up act I learned that in the first 10 minutes I could say anything and it would get a laugh. Then I'd better deliver. In the movie it's the same thing. You get a lot of laughs when people first sit down and then the story better kick in. Many years in front of an audience, I would hope, give me a sense of what works.

When I began doing theatre in high school I saw that I could get laughs from people but I didn't really connect that to going on and becoming a comedian. I was interested in acting and while I was at Boston College I was part of an improv group, Mother's Fleabag, which had a long history and has been known as one of the best college improvisation groups in the U.S.

The first time I got on stage I was 10 years old and I did impressions. I did cartoon characters and I really got the bug for this life when I saw that people were laughing and saw the attention I was getting.

In my Comedy Club sets, I just work on what is fresh and try to build that show as long as I can. I don't like to do burnt material on stage. Even though my crowd loves to hear me do old stuff, I don't like to do old stuff.

Comedians rarely have writers, and if you do it's usually a sign of laziness.

Once I started doing specials I always incorporated "Fluffy" into it. But with Stand-Up Revolution, I left it out because I want it to be different for people. I'm there, yes, but it's something different.

I like to read, but otherwise I'm just your average, self-obsessed comedian. It's pretty much all I think about.

People said to me, "You know, when you record a special, you're going to regret it. The one thing you'll regret because you're a comic is you'll think of better tags."

When I made 'Sleepwalk with Me,' many people asked me if was a novelty thing, a one-off. But this is the goal, I'm just hitting it 12 years after I thought I would.

I'm not a comedy writer, I'm a comedian, so I only write stuff that I would want to say.

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 always wanted to give people the more exciting version of what I think a comedian should be - because I didn't grow up with comics, I grew up with rock 'n' roll. And when I saw a lot of comics, no matter how good they might have been material-wise, I would get a little bored with them after 10 minutes, only because I feel comedians don't really know performance.

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

My job is to go out and entertain the most people possible. The job is to make people laugh. I don't have a mission. I don't have a torch to burn.

I often think it can often be very difficult for comedians to revisit the same gag. I think Russell's a bit more than a comedian.

If you can't write your own material, you have very little chance of making it as a comedian.