Varun Grover Quotes

When you get started in comedy, you're at the bottom of the totem pole. Not only are you not getting paid at these open mics. You're actually paying to do them.

When we left university, in the late '80s, one of the guys had been to the Comedy Store in London, came back very excited and suggested we set up something like it. And so we did.

I just want to continue to do comedy. Comedy, I'm discovering, is my niche. It's what I'm born to do, so I would love to have my own sitcom one day in the future.

I've been doing stand-up since '89.

I'm a comedian first. I've learned how to act. I just draw on life experiences and that's how I've learned. I didn't take classes or anything. I don't need no classroom.

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

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

In the mid-1970s, there was this huge boom of stand-up comedy throughout North America. I went to see a show at a club called Yuk-Yuks, in Toronto, and I was just fascinated. I ended up coming back for amateur hour on a Monday at midnight and got up there without any thought as to what might come of it.

For my first gig, I got $75. I could make money being funny, so I pursued it as a career and have turned it into a lucrative business.

I grew up in Chicago and was a huge fan of 'The Second City', so when I moved to L.A., I was looking for anything that resembled that... then I started 'The Groundlings', so I went to a show and it was very much like 'Second City'. I was so impressed that that same night I went backstage and I went up to the funniest person there.

Performing comedy in San Francisco to begin with is pretty wild. You've got to - you've got the human game preserve to play off of. And it's a lot of great characters everywhere. You work off that, and then you play the rooms, and eventually you get to a point where you're playing a club that is a comedy club, with other comics.

You know, my first album, some of those jokes I'd done for twelve years because I couldn't throw 'em out.

Nick Kroll, A.D. Miles, Chelsea Peretti - those were the people I was always doing open mics with.

There's a lot of open mics, a lot of comedy clubs. Whatever money I could make was OK with me. As long as I could pay the rent, eat food, and tell jokes, doing it was good enough for me.

I started working full time as a comedian in 2005, shortly after we did the Vince Vaughn 'Wild West Comedy Show.' I worked at the Four Seasons hotel from 1998 to 2005, so about seven years, just trying to put some food on the table and pay the rent while I went out to the open mics and got my feet wet with stand-up comedy.

From very early on, I had always wanted to be a stand-up comedian. It was my passion; it was my goal. It was a world I was simply infatuated with. So, as soon as I could, I moved out to L.A. chasing after my dream.

Somewhat naively, I entered the BBC's 'New Talent Competition,' believing it was for people who had never tried comedy before. I remember sitting in the dressing room before the show and hearing the other acts - who all knew one another - talking to Rhod Gilbert about how he must be about ready to go 'full-time' as a comic.

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 started pursuing stand-up comedy in 12th grade.

No, I never really set out to be a stand up. I wanted to be a writer of some sort. I thought I'd do a bit of stand up and hopefully that will lead to stuff and little did I know it kind of snowballed. Before I knew it I was doing stand up 300 nights a year.

I worked for the Comedy Store as an employee trying to become a paid regular. I had this dream of achieving a half hour special on TV.

Science was always a passion, but I also loved 'Monty Python' and 'The Young Ones,' and I discovered the Footlights comedy club at university, where a lot of those people got their start. I had a go and loved it immediately. After that, I just couldn't stop writing sketches, and it all took off from there.

I started doing little amateur nights at the comedy club that was right next to the restaurant that I waitressed in when I was in university. I was probably 22 years old. I didn't do it with any intention of making a career out of it; I had just always valued comedy.

There's [John Mulaney Show] jokes that I have in stand up that I wouldn't try to put in, I would try to have someone just speak extemporaneously in the middle of a scene about an episode of "Law and Order" or something.

I've spent the last few years just really actively pursuing comedy and that's something I always wanted to know how to do.