Katherine Ryan Quotes

I never wanted to be road comic.

After I got my first laugh on stage, I was hooked.

I started comedy in 2006. I didn't even think it was a thing I could do.

I'm hardly a known name, but I don't want to go, like, 'Oh, people call me a storyteller comedian, let me just go up and just talk about my day.' I don't want that to happen.

If I tried to do comedy for the rest of my career, I would not be very successful.

I think I probably would have gone into stand-up.

I haven't been offstage for more than two days since I started doing comedy.

When I was in third grade I taught myself ventriloquism... What's hard is to learn to be an entertainer and make people laugh. I was a few years out of college before I felt I had enough material. Then in 1988 I moved to L.A. and started to do some shows at comedy clubs.

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.

I could never do stand-up because it's that thing of having to get up on stage. And out of every 10 jokes you tell, nine of them have to get a really good response.

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

It took forever for me to get work because I was a political comic, and now it's become good business, and God knows how long that'll last. You have to do it night after night after night to kind of make it. I still find myself on 'Piers Morgan' or on some show and I think, 'I hope this is funny.'

But long story short, I didn't start doing stand-up because I wanted to have a TV show or be an actor or even wanted to write sketch comedy. I got into stand-up because I love stand-up.

I have no qualifications to do anything else and there weren't any formal application forms you had to fill in for stand-up, so I thought I'd give that a twist.

Being a comedian is an incredible thing, but it can be scary sometimes.

You can't be a proper comic unless you've been out on stage and felt the fear.

I haven't really done a lot of comedy. It's something that terrifies me.

I had no desire to be a stand-up comic until I decided to do it.

Comedy is an amazing calling. Once you get that first laugh, it's hard to turn away. Then, of course, you're hooked and you have to learn how to survive in the business.

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

It seems like when I first started, people got into comedy because they wanted to be good comedians.

I had some friends that tried it down there, and I went to a couple of open mics, and I just kind of got this... this sick urge to try it instead of just watching it.

Before doing my first open mic, I was sitting in the back watching all these comedians banter back and forth and fire jokes and up each other, and I thought, 'This is where I wanna be.'

I think the challenge is going out in front of a paying audience with absolutely nothing and trying to entertain them for two hours. Thankfully, I only think about that right before we go on, and then once we're out there, everything's fine.

I realize as I get older that stand-up is a huge part of who I am. I think I'll do it for the rest of my life.