Ron White Quotes

Beyond any role that I ever had, really early on as a stand-up, I would see actors decide to try it and they would bomb miserably. What I realized was that stand-up, acting and writing are all their own disciplines.

I have a tough time with stand-up because I am an improviser. I can riff; I can do crowd work, so I don't prepare.

I never want to cannibalize my act, and I'm really excited that I am going to be able to perform new material. I'm not a huge fan of repeating jokes, and I don't really do any of my old material from old stand-up acts.

You have to do stand-up quite a long time before you learn how to do it well.

Stand-up keeps you alive. It is definitely the most specialized field in comedy because you need to stay sharp and well-tuned every night.

There's no real preparing at home for stand-up. You just go and you just do it.

When I began doing stand-up, it took me a long time to get an hour's worth of material together.

I always try to improve my stand-up game, it's very important for me.

Comedy clubs sharpen a comic, they're like the gym for us, making us stronger, faster, funnier. Without them every comedy show would feel like a monologue.

When you are doing stand-up comedy, you are the writer, producer, director, sometimes bouncer.

I mean, all alternative comedy is are comedians that have being doing it for so long, for so long, that they were relaxed enough to start becoming personal on stage.

As a comic, you try something and if it works you go with it and grind it to death.

When you're doing stand-up, you can comment if something fails, get a laugh from that.

Richard Lewis is the master at taking a joke that he's told a million times in a row in the past year, on the road, and making it look like he's pulling it out of thin air.

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

My stand-up is quite good now, people say. It's just like a big conversation each time. Every gig is a rehearsal.

Stand-up is hard.

If you are doing stand-up comedy, you have to be confident in what you are doing. That doesn't mean just because you are confident you are funny.

Comedy is not funny. Comedy is hard work and timing and lots and lots of rehearsals.

The only way to get better at stand-up is to do loads of gigs, and I don't know. I spread myself pretty thin to get the stage time. I'd love to do more, really.

Bad improv happens with people who are inexperienced with each other and don't know the craft that well. But bad stand-up is something that could happen to someone at any level in their career.

When you're doing comedy constantly, you're organized: you know where everything is, you know how to get out of it, you know how to stretch it. But, like, doing 'SNL,' I stopped doing spots, and then I would finally do some sets - it take me so long to, kind of, get in the rhythm of it.

The most frightening thing about playing Dick Gregory is I've never done stand-up before, and I had to learn how to be a stand-up comedian, which was a bit of a challenge.

When you're a stand-up comic, you live and die by what you say on stage. There's no director or writer or producer who can tell you what to say and not to say. Once in a while, a club owner will ask a comic to work clean, or not say something, but that's few and far between.

If I'm not in the theatre, I'm in an open mic night or doing a guest set at the Comedy Club, or whatever, just trying to develop stuff.