Wyatt Cenac Quotes

I write these shows one joke at a time. There's no continuity. I do try to figure an order to the stories, but there's not continuity.

I'm not saying being a comedian is brain surgery, but it is definitely - it's like being a carpenter. You learn how to make tables and chairs. You have to have the right tools, and you have to know how to put the thing together, right?

Comedians are really writers who don't have pens and pencils about them, but they riff.

Stand-up is the foundation to my career. It's what I started out doing.

I started doing my own animated movies when I was in ninth grade; that's when I got the filmmaking bug. When I was about 16, I started writing jokes for doing stand up, and then I was 19 and started doing stand up.

I write in reverse: Rather than come up with a narrative and write jokes for that narrative, I write jokes independently of the narrative, then I try to fit them in.

I can't write a joke. I could never write. I do a lot of stories and I call them stories, but they're just comedy recitals on a given subject.

I always was a writer, but then I wanted to do stand-up because I thought that was a way that I could perform what I wrote.

That's what comedy is like: You have to force yourself out in the world because you're always one experience away from new material.

I certainly tried to talk about less complex things, but I've had to accept that it's just not what I do. That isn't to say that my shows are depressing - they aren't. At least, I hope they aren't! The problem I have with stories about happy things is that they don't require any skill from a comic - they just repeat the details verbatim.

Late night is no different than making a film, really, except that it's faster, and if you do a crap one, you can do a better one tomorrow. Writing a novel and doing stand-up - that stuff is very similar.

Those early days of comedy are when you get addicted to it.

As an actor, our very palette is one of imagination. So it is a walk onto an empty space and then imagine the world beyond it is what we do.

The way I like to work is to attach personal experiences to what I'm doing, so it helps tremendously if I can write my own play under what the writer has written.

My stand-up has a lot of performance in it, and I loved doing it so much that, after years, I put the idea of having a show on the back burner.

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.

My job is mostly to entertain and be funny.

Acting is an imaginative leap, really, isn't it? And imaginations prosper in different circumstances.

I don't enjoy writing newspaper articles any more than people like reading them. I'm a standup comic, not a journalist, although sometimes onstage I will say: 'What else is in the news?' Writing is work, which I'm not comfortable with.

I started doing radio pieces with no clear, preconceived idea, except that I have a tendency to be theatrical.

I definitely script things out. I definitely write things down and try to write jokes. Often, they're terrible. I often write terrible, terrible jokes.

If you do a sketch, that's a very short narrative. Stand-up, it's bit-to-bit, minute-long narratives.

I really loved what I was doing being creative and being funny as a stand-up comedian.

Actors are good liars; writers are good liars with good memories.

My training was that you fill in the canvas where it needs colour and polishing. You start with the words on the first night and keep adding bits of business.