Natasha Leggero Quotes

One place that I really feel comfortable is being a comedienne. I'm very socially inept. There's so many things that I can not do in life, and this is, like, the one thing that I have mastery over. It's my world. And anybody who's coming to the show, it's like they're coming because they know that this is my world.

The dumber you are on court, the better you're going to play.

I would be an idiot to say comedy is easy, but it does come naturally. It never feels forced.

One was never taught how to begin at drama school. But all it required was one intake of breath.

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

The first time I did stand-up was on a dare.

I always tell people I went to the Harvard School of Comedy in front of America.

I never studied directing and I never really thought about doing it, and then I just found myself in that situation and tried it. I like to be observing everything else, and I get self-conscious in front of the camera.

There is never hesitation about doing stand-up. It's just me doing my thing.

I love flying by the seat of my pants, going at something instinctually.

As a comedian, it really gelled when I started doing standup. Because standup is so much about bravery, especially in the early days. There is no doubt that it is going to go terribly for you over and over and over again. But you cannot get funny without bombing.

The thing that makes you a good 'Caraoke Showdown' singer is you gotta have some knowledge of these songs. You gotta be ready to attack. You gotta shut your brain off and just go.

Early on, I had a girlfriend come see me, and she was like, 'Yeah, it was good, but you were funny at a dining hall at the University of Maryland.' That's when I realized I was contrived. I was reciting jokes. So I really worked on - no matter what - sounding like I was just talking to the people.

I'm not a comedian who wants to spend far too long on stage.

You can succeed as a terrible director, but try doing that with stand-up: try being a terrible comedian and getting up on stage. The funny will win out very, very quickly.

I'm used to sort of improvising a lot when I do my comedies.

I don't write anything. It's all done onstage, which is why I always tell younger comics that they just have to go do it. You have to get up, talk, and take a thought or a word and just expound, and you find it in there. I don't sit down and write.

I did so many open mics. I would write jokes on Twitter constantly, and then slowly, over time, open mics turned into shows. If you can get a joke to work at an open mic, it's a good joke.

You're at your best when you don't know what you're doing.

That's good when you don't know what you're doing. But you're doing it and it's spontaneous and you're not afraid.

As you get ready to walk out under the bright lights of the improvisational stage of the rest of your life... be bold. Don't always worry about what your next line is going to be.

Black audiences are probably the toughest for me to make laugh. I've gotten pretty good at performing for them, but it's still a challenge.

Whenever a young comic asks me for advice I only have two things to say. One is to try and do what you think is genuinely funny and the other is just do loads of gigs.

'Cause I do so much homework I'm good to go on the first take; I don't want to rehearse. I like the element of what's unpredictable of that first take and nobody knows what's going to happen, and I'm a big fan of that.

Whatever you see me do is spontaneous reactions on stage. It's nothing planned. It's nothing that I got in the room and tried to think of hard. It just happens through feeling.