Sarah Silverman Quotes

You're always on duty because you're in a constant state of observation. That's one of the challenges of being a comedian. I think one of the other challenges is that, whether we like it or not, it's a profession that requires failure. It doesn't just encourage failure. It requires it because it's all trial and error. You need to know what doesn't work to know what works.

When you do stand-up, you're just concerned with trying to leave with some semblance of human dignity at the end of your performance.

Creative risks will always outweigh technical mistakes.

When you take high risks, the rewards are higher. So sometimes I'll gamble just to see what happens. If it doesn't work, I know I can't do that.

I never could tell a joke. I just started talking to the audience, and when the drunks would yell, "Hey, when do the broads come on?" I got good at saying, "Relax. Clear your skin up first." They called me "the insult guy," but it's never mean-spirited. I'm just exaggerating everything about us and about life.

I could never be Charlie Chaplin. But the films that were made by people like him, or Gene Wilder, or John Candy, the people that inspired me so much were the people that were able to combine humor with heartbreak so beautifully and fluidly. Those films I think were what inspired me to want to come to L.A. and audition for movies.

I'd probably be better in an action role and even a more comedic role as I find myself pretty hilarious.

If I want to keep working as an actor, I'm going to become a comedian who does fart jokes.

Stand-up comedy is like the lowest medium in all of show business in levels of respect.

I would say Colin Jost is Kanye West because he takes like the creative risk a lot of times, whereas I'm like, "Uh, I don't know..."

The worst years of my life were the first two years I was doing standup. You're learning how to do, and you're going on stage in front of two drunks and people aren't laughing and you're broke. That's a really hard time in your life.

Stand-up comedy had an interesting effect on me in terms of how I started to think about constructing things, because I really loved the interstices, the linkages, or lack thereof.

A lot of amazing comedians that I've worked with just really follow their instincts and you can't really teach someone comedic timing. And you just kind of have it.

Unfortunately, you're helpless when people interpret your work wrongly. There are simply people who can't or won't understand or accept what you're trying to do. When you take the risk of expressing yourself in public, you have to open yourself to that possibility.

I think risk is important. I don't care if it's a great financial risk or a physical risk. You only get out of something what you put into it and the fact that you are willing to risk something means that you are going to get a lot more out of it.

I like to think of myself as the middleman between Fred Allen and Henny Youngman.

Do not simplify. Do not worry about failure. Failure is a badge of honour. It means you risked failure.

All significant achievement comes from daring from experiment from the willingness to risk failure.

By watching the great, old comedians I picked up a few tricks about how to do physical comedy. And whenever I could learn something, I sort of added that to my repertoire.

If I'm not free to fail, I'm not free to take risks and everything in life that's worth doing involves a willingness to take a risk.

When young comedians ask me for advice that's the one thing I always say is if they're improvisers I'm like do improv, don't make that your sole thing. And at the end of the day when you do your best work you also just kinda, by definition flush it down the toilet and never do it again.

Whatever happens in life can happen on the stage, but as a comedian you should always be clear what your target is. It's fine to be gratuitously tasteless if that's what you are intending to do. It's that old line: I don't defend what a comedian might say but I defend to the death his right to say it.

I found doing that kind of comedy without an audience is just... for me, it's almost impossible. You need the audience to do their half of the work.

One of the things I'm most proud of about myself is my ability to fail in front of the world. You have to have that attitude when you want to experiment in art, in music, in writing, or in fashion.

There is always a chance of failure, of producing something totally unnecessary. But I guess that chance of failure is what makes tightrope walking, race-car driving.