Artie Lange Quotes

When I began doing stand-up, it took me a long time to get an hour's worth of material together.

Bad improv happens with people who are inexperienced with each other and don't know the craft that well. But bad stand-up is something that could happen to someone at any level in their career.

The only way to stay sharp is to do live shows. There is no part-time comedy.

Impressions are still kind of hard for me and not what I love to do the most, but with characters, I think there's an element of fearlessness. You try to figure out the best reading and wording of the jokes before the show, and then you just really have to go hard.

As a standup comedian, you have to develop a sense of fearlessness. It's really important for your livelihood and your well-being. And if you don't do that, you're going to fail; you're never going to be able to stand up on the cliff and jump off.

I could never do stand-up because it's that thing of having to get up on stage. And out of every 10 jokes you tell, nine of them have to get a really good response.

When I was doing stand-up, I was about twenty, and I really think that that's a little too young. I didn't have a whole lot of life experience to draw on.

TV is easier: it's all planned out for you and the audience is there to see a show and they are all pumped up but when you are in a comedy club, you have to be really funny to win them over.

TV is easier: it's all planned out for you, and the audience is there to see a show and they are all pumped up, but when you are in a comedy club, you have to be really funny to win them over. To me, that's more pure.

I'm a frustrated stand-up comic. If you hand me a microphone and I get one laugh, then I'll go on for 20 minutes.

As a comedian, I'm forced to have a tough skin. Until people laugh, they are detractors. You walk into a new audience where nobody knows you, they go: 'Make us laugh. Show us what you're made of. Prove why we should be listening to you.'

I have to visualise my jokes, live my jokes, feel the audience because every audience is different. It's like having a different dancing partner every night.

I'm definitely guilty of thinking something is funny but thinking the audience won't. Then three years later I will finally try it and it'll kill them. I got to give them more credit.

In standup, it's just you. You're your own writer, your own critic, your own director, and it's never the same. You really don't always have it down. Your continue to learn, you continue to risk, and I really love it.

Being able to write jokes is great, but you still have to get used to performing them and being on stage - and enjoying being on stage, not just like tolerating it.

I love doing stand-up, and the more you do outside of stand-up to raise your profile, the better your stand-up becomes in terms of the quality of gigs.

The more you work in this business as a comedian, the closer you get to just being yourself onstage, on camera, the more well received you are.

Stand-up comedy is something that you have to strive to do, multiple times a night, every night, to be good.

Open mics are a great way to rework your material to see what punchlines land best.

Before I started doing standup, I knew that I had what it takes to develop an act. I went down to clubs with not many people there, and I just worked on it, man. A lot of my friends are comedians, so that part had a lot of encouragement, even though the shows were very caveman-like.

I don't know if there's a strategy really so much as, like I learned doing standup and had to learn fast, you always just try to give your favorite, strongest stuff as early as possible and you start with what you like the most.

If you're not doing something or saying something in comedy, the camera is going to go somewhere else.

I continue to do standup because there's a connection with a live audience - there are skills that you do learn as a standup comedian that help you on a set.

Once I started getting serious about standup I got a better handle on word economy and making jokes punchier, which translated well to Twitter.

I've learnt that from stand-up - you should always worry that it's going to go badly, otherwise you're too laissez faire.