Chris Rock Quotes

I'm a good counter comedian. I can just work it off with looks, or have something crazy to say back. That works for me.

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

Anybody can go onstage and be dirty. You have to be funny, that's the key. You can say anything as long as it's funny. You can't take it too seriously up there. And people coming to see you can't take it too seriously.

Performing comedy, you develop a rhythm of ideas and laughs. I live for it.

That's a lovely experience when you make an audience laugh. Then the nerves go away for a bit. And sometimes you do things then that you've never done before that are really funny.

If I tell a joke on stage and the crowd laughs for a minute, I stand there for a minute and enjoy them laughing before I go on to the next joke. On TV, if I stand there for a minute while they laugh, I look like an idiot who can't remember the next joke.

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 was always sort of a ham as a kid, just always wanting to entertain and to get people to laugh.

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're doing comedy on stage, it's great because you have the audience there and they're like another actor in the scene. You feed off of them, laugh. But in film when everyone's quiet, it's all about timing. But the key to that is to be authentic. Be in the moment, and if you play the moment truthfully, the humor will be there.

There are jokes I know I want to tell, and there's sort of a rough order, but usually I try to change it up every show, to improvise and talk with the audience. I think when you tell jokes, if you're not careful, you can end up telling the whole list of jokes and then that's it. And that can get a little boring.

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.

People sometimes say how standup is so hard, and I always tell them that it's hard at the beginning.

I was like a Borscht Belt comedian trapped in the body of a 6-year-old. I was channeling Jackie Mason at 7.

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

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

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.

I do comedy shows. I make fun of myself, first of all.

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

The jokes are great but what really matters for a comedian is his performance, his whole attitude, and the laughs that he gets between the jokes rather than on top of the jokes.

Sometimes it's cool to have banter with the audience. Occasionally, somebody will say something, and I'll say something right back, and everybody laughs, and it's funny.

Part of being a comic is being flexible, being versatile.

Stand-up is cool. In stand-up, you get to learn about yourself if you do it from a thoughtful place.

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.