Lewis Black Quotes

I remember I used to go to The Laugh Factory and just goof off onstage, and then I'd see Dane Cook. He did a bit about his Mom making the bed in the summertime when he was a kid. He just said "Vroom!" and threw the sheet up in the air and the sheet would just stay over the bed for like a minute and a half. All he had were his arms out, but I could see the sheet. And he didn't do anything. He just kept it there. And I went, "I have to write more."

Usually the beginning of a story that people hear a lot. For example, "My girlfriend is upset about her new haircut" or "My dad keeps losing his car keys." And then I just think of different ways the story could end. "My girlfriend is upset about her new haircut. I don't understand why she's crying. I'm the one who has to get a new girlfriend." Then I try it out on stage. I don't do a lot of re-writing. My jokes either work or they don't. The trick is just to write a ton of jokes.

The ability to workshop in stand-up comedy is incomparable to any art form, in my opinion.

When you have a writing partner and you're writing a comedy, your goal is to make each other laugh.

The trouble with the jokes is that once they're written, I know how they're supposed to work, and all I can do is not hit them. I'm more comfortable improvising. If I have just two or three ideas and I know how the character feels, what the character wants, everything in between is like trapeze work.

At first I had no skills in writing comedy. I didn't know what a joke was, but, as someone once told me, your emotions follow your intent. If you create the intention of starting a comedy act, slowly your mind starts adjusting and you arrive at a new emotional state.

The victory of the show is in the writing. Coming up with sketches and stand-up bits. The rest is just hitting buttons on a machine more or less.

There are a lot of great jokes you can sit down and write, but that's just a written joke, versus the comedy of the situation. Ideally, you're pulling as much comedy out of the situation as you can.

I try to write three jokes every morning, although I don't know what they are. I write them as fast as I can, then I put them away for a month. So I couldn't even tell you what they are, or if they're good. I just assume they weren't.

I love writing stand-up so much and tinkering and looking for ideas.

Typically, when you're with your friends, premises are coming up left and right. But when you're on stage, you must create the premise. So you have to create the premise, paint the picture and then deliver the punch line.

With stand-up, there's a little bit of an exaggerated reality because things have to be manipulated to create comedy, to create jokes.

With stand-up, it doesn't matter who you are. If the audience claps because they love your movies, that clapping stops after five seconds, and then it's your job to make them laugh.

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.

Comedians are really writers who don't have pens and pencils about them, but they riff.

Coming up with comedy is hard, man. Those bits aren't easy to think of!

I wrote comedy sketches in college.

Doing stand-up takes the fun out of being funny.

My stand-up has always been very character-based. I'm not really the kind of person that's like, 'Hey, here's what's on my mind! Tip your waitress!' I would create the jokes based on the character I was playing. It was always a performance-based thing for me.

Everyone tells me I need to do comedy. It's never something that crossed my mind, but to be able to do a true comedy and make people laugh, that would be great.

Some comics have long routines to get them in the mood - I just prefer to sit down, write out the same jokes in a different order and then have a little prayer that I won't be met by silence.

I'm not as incredibly prolific as Louis C. K., and I'm definitely not doing a completely brand-new hour probably by the beginning of the tour.

I never planned to be a comedian. I don't consider myself one now.

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 knew at an early age that I wanted to pursue comedy.