Aziz Ansari Quotes

Stand-up is my baby.

You know, stand-up comedy is where I pretty much started out.

I'd love to try comedy, which I've never actually done. I could fail miserably at it, but I'd have fun working it out.

I took a stand-up comedy class because I'd always wanted to.

I started doing stand-up when I was 16, my junior year in high school. My two friends and I would sit at home watching stand-up. They kept saying I should try it, and so I did.

I think anybody in front of a crowd is a comedian.

I always wanted to be a stand-up comedian, even as a kid. Me and my dad would watch 'Evening at the Improv' on A&E.

The thing about stand-ups is you can't really get good unless you're failing in front of a large number of people. That makes stand-up comedy unique: you need a tremendous amount of reserve within you to take the rejection from the audience, and without it, you can't do anything.

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.

Stand up is really fun because if I think of a joke or a funny idea, then I can just go and tell some people and if they laugh, they laugh right away.

Stand-up is the kind of gig that'll show you where you're at.

I started stand-up in 2007. I'd done a couple of gigs before that, but not much, and I was in a sketch group at Uni from 2005 as well.

The really good stand up comedians can be angry but relatable, and they have interestingly humanizing personalities. Their observational skills are far greater than mine, so I'll just stick to reading lines off a page.

The first time I did stand-up was the summer I was 17.

A comedian is sort of like a wild animal. It really just depends on where you catch them. Sometimes they want to cuddle up, and sometimes they'll snap at you. But for me, more often than not, if I'm talking to somebody who makes their living in comedy, it'll be a very thoughtful conversation driven from an emotionally honest place.

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

I started doing stand-up in college.

Stand-up is hard.

I actually opened for Chris Rock at the Funny Bone one time.

Someone said to me at a party once, 'Oh, yeah, you're a comedian? Then how come you're not funny now?' And I just wanted to say, 'Well, I'm just going to take this conversation we're having and then repeat that to strangers, and then that's the joke. You're the joke later.'

Stand-up comedy is a raunchy profession.

I enjoy doing comedy for the fact that you go to work and you laugh. That's a good combination.

I don't get up, get dressed, go out, and think, 'Okay, I gotta find eight jokes.'

When I was in high school, I was doing all the plays. My drama teacher, Melody Duggan, was the one one who first made me do stand-up. She's the origin of the whole thing; it's all her. In high school in Denver, that was kind of the beginning of it all.

I've actually never done standup before.