Amy Poehler Quotes

I never go see live comedy shows because I just sit in the audience thinking, "Here's what I would say. Here's what I would do if I got up there." It drives me crazy.

Being a comedian is an incredible thing, but it can be scary sometimes.

Sometimes I think our problems are made worse by the kind of business we're in. Playing these road shows is a weird experience.

If I could live a parallel life, I would be a sitcom star; being in front of a live audience would be great.

I much prefer doing comedy. I get a little paranoid when the audience is not laughing.

Even the first suitcase-off-the-train moment, it's easy to be discouraged, frustrated, annoyed, angry. Because you're waiting in freezing weather outside of an open call, and you're like, 'This moment of me right now is not the joy I felt when I was doing J. Pierrepont Finch in 'How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying' in high school.'

There's a certain truism that you can't be self-conscious in comedy.

I love my job - I'm going to keep doing it until I die - but there's nothing more soul-destroying than having to cancel a show.

I always imitated other people and thought, 'Well, maybe I'll do standup,' but I was too afraid for that.

Although I do stand-up - doing actual stage work is terrifying for me.

I do a little improv in my shows. Kind of like our movie, I'll do beats and ideas of dialogue, but I think there's less pressure because it's a live show. If you mess up, the audience laughs because we don't really know what we're doing. But as far as shooting, that was very scary, trying to make a point and drive the film. It definitely helped improvising.

My knee-jerk is that it is comedy and, if you watch them all back-to-back, you will gain something and you will lose something.

[We often] criticize the people on TV: 'He just can't act.' 'You call that singing?' ... We get jealous not because we're evil, but because we have little artists pent up inside us.

I don't get any anxiety. I don't because of two reasons. Number one, just breaking through it as a kid and finally getting past it was like okay, nothing's ever going to feel that scary again as that deafening silence of a joke not working. Any joke not working is not as bad as not being able to even try and get on stage.

I think I may drop dead on the stage someday. I hate to think of it. But it's getting tough on me, the travel. The show, I somehow manage to rise up to it, you know. But I have no desire to retire.

In the limelight I play it off fine, but I can't handle it when I turn off my night-light.

I don't watch anything I'm in. Not even on set. I won't go over to the monitor to watch what we've just shot. It's too terrible. I think I'm just very self-conscious.

Totie Fields is one of my benchmarks for a lot of things. There was a standard of show business.

When I was young, I used to be so jealous of other girls that it crippled me.

The Olympics is not a race I want to watch on television and think 'I wonder what I could have done if I was there?

I'm kind of jealous of the life I'm supposedly leading.

He's just jealous. You know what they say. Empty tin cans make the most noise, and he's an empty tin can. This game is between the Bears and the Eagles, not Ditka and Ryan. We all know who would win that one. Ditka, hands down.

I don't think I've ever died on stage. I've had jokes that died on stage. I've told a joke and absolutely nothing. They didn't know it was the end of the joke.

That I have no right to be jealous is irrelevant. It is a human passion: the sick, white underbelly of love.

The key to every actor is deep, deep insecurity.