Ron White Quotes

I want to be more physical and theatrical within the stand-up. There might be dance moments, and people better watch out - I will gallop.

Stand-up is live, so I'm used to being live for most of my career. It's interesting.

I don't consider myself a comic but a performer. A comic tells bad jokes.

When I come out to do my stand-up set, I pretty much get bombarded with lines from movies. You try to play off it a little bit, but that's what people want to see.

I don't really like doing big stand-up. Whenever I do theaters, I don't like 'em. I don't think they're right for stand-up. I've seen people in theaters, and it just doesn't work, because you're talking to the guy next to you the whole time.

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

My act's not heavy on pop culture or stories, just lots of jokes.

I will always do stand-up, even if my acting career takes off. Stand-up is my life.

Theo does comedy now, and he's traveling around the country doing comedy, and I actually just saw him, he's from Louisiana, and I just saw him when I went home to visit my family in Louisiana. I saw his comedy show and he was brilliant.

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

I don't know what Tracy Morgan does onstage, but I can assure you, it's no act.

I do love live performing, but I'm not a stand-up naturally, and I don't like the lifestyle of working just in the evenings at clubs and stuff - not a natural gig-er.

Stand-up will always come first. I've been doing it for 22 years, and nothing compares to that connection you have with the audience. It's euphoric.

When I'm not on T.V. or working on a movie, I'm on the road doing stand-up. That's my roots.

There's so many ways to do stand up, and I think for awhile, people weren't really maximizing the freedom of it.

Stand-up is kind of like my home base, and doing stand-up in New York is what I like doing most.

I'd been to the Comedy Store, and I loved the terror of it and the way the best comedians could control the crowd. What confidence that would give you, if you could somehow survive.

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.

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 don't necessarily have a traditional stand-up set.

My first love is doing my own comedy stuff.

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.

At the end of the day, stand-up comedy is like acting when the audience are the other characters that I'm acting with.

I call it 'new forms'. When you're starting out, they ask you to do four or five minute sets, but once you're a headliner, you do like 90 minutes. I try to think of different things to divvy up the show, like doing drawings, playing music... I gotta carry the show, that's the problem.

In my Comedy Club sets, I just work on what is fresh and try to build that show as long as I can. I don't like to do burnt material on stage. Even though my crowd loves to hear me do old stuff, I don't like to do old stuff.