Chris Rock Quotes

Stand-up is an amazing art form, I think, because it's all about you having complete control of the situation, but absolutely none.

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.

It's not most important to communicate myself on stage as it is to be as funny or interesting as I possibly can on stage. I feel more like I'm doing a play whose main character just happens to share my name.

I separate the performer from the private citizen because it works for me. That gives the surprise element to my show. It doesn't change my playing. But if in a business suit they would think I was crazy. It's like putting Marlene Dietrich in a housedress.

Your only guidepost is your own instinct and judicious editing. In my stand-up act I learned that in the first 10 minutes I could say anything and it would get a laugh. Then I'd better deliver. In the movie it's the same thing. You get a lot of laughs when people first sit down and then the story better kick in. Many years in front of an audience, I would hope, give me a sense of what works.

Looking back, I didn't realize until years later what a huge influence Red Skelton was in my stage demeanor with the band. I mean, I always liked things that were funny, and later I realized that having a sly sense of humor was a way to get attention and even respect in school.

The first time I got on stage I was 10 years old and I did impressions. I did cartoon characters and I really got the bug for this life when I saw that people were laughing and saw the attention I was getting.

For about three years I was performing at one bar in East Los Angeles that was like a mean dive bar. You're in there performing for drunks or bikers, not the most flattering people. I think it helped build my confidence, because you have to get their attention, then make them laugh.

I was in Antwerp - which, I had about 20 shows left at that point - and a guy said, "That's Dave Attell's." Also, Antwerp was my smallest audience, so the guy was right there. I was like, "What?" He said, "Dave Attell does a bit about, 'Why are there luggage stores in the airport?'" I had never seen that, and I would never ever, ever, ever - please believe me - I would never lift material from somebody ever, and certainly not knowingly.

Bette Midler can say four-letter words and make you love it.

I've never been able to tell jokes. In the beginning of my career I did impressions and jokes like any other comedian, but I was never very successful because I did it poorly. So I started to talk to the audience and started talking about the atmosphere around me and started to become angry, not in a mean-spirited way, but in a fun way - and my attitude developed from there.

As a live stand-up comedy performer, I have the benefit of choosing real entrance music.

A comedian is not a person who opens a funny door - he's the person who opens a door funny.

My only regret in the theater is that I could never sit out front and watch me.

I don't really have a pattern yet. I don't know if I'll develop one. As far as comedic integrity, I don't have integrity in general, comedic or otherwise.

As far as just my stand-up is concerned, I don't care about changing anyone's mind. I'm not making an argument. I'm a guy doing comedy.

Stand-up is not something that you're good at right away. You have to do it a ton. But, I think I got to shave a year off because I didn't have to get over stage fright.

I am a guy who talks about bacon and escalators. Stand-up comedy is very much a conversation. It's very personal, stylistically.

I'm not a naturally funny man. I find that I can only be funny, if I become someone else.

I think, as a comedian, the funniest you can be is with people you know, and [whom] you've known for years, in a pub. That's as funny as you get, and so the aim [while stand-up] is to get that funny on stage with 5,000 strangers, to get that funny in a room where people shouldn't be listening but they are.

One of the reasons I still do stand-up is because it was so hard in the beginning that I feel like it would be such a shame not to redeem it that it's all fun.

Chris Addison is a stand-up comic, but his ability to act is extraordinary, to be so natural, I've taken 25 years just getting to that level.

I'm tired of explaining to Hollywood that people would laugh at me, because I go around America making them laugh every week. Nobody would be offended, nobody would think my leather pants are too controversial.

I became a guy who wanted to be a comedian someday, or a comic actor. The way I put it was, I'll be like Danny Kaye. He was kind of the model I had in mind.

What I've realized in the last year, 80% of my act has already happened to me, and it's not until you retell the story at a party or to a friend or it comes up on the podcast that you, I don't know why I'm not doing that onstage!