Seth Meyers Quotes

With stand-up you can just be yourself on stage. And ideally, you can't see the crowd most of the time - it's just lights in your face. But I still have had terrible stage fright.

I never was shy, but as far as telling jokes, I'm the worst. I like physical comedy; it's where I feel comfortable.

You say a line and you wait for them to laugh, then you say another line and you wait... It felt weird to me. But it's interesting and the energy is almost like theatre, I suppose, with all the people there.

When you're a stand-up, you play in front of 600 people, and it's all about timing. I could never do stand-up comedy; it would be way too hard for me.

I never really feel like just standing there and telling jokes. I want to move around. In fact, it's hard for me to write a joke where I don't end up on the ground for some reason. Hey, at least that way, I know no comics will steal my jokes. Too many bruises.

One time I happened to use the word 'denigrate' onstage, and it didn't get any reaction. So as I continued my act, the left side of my brain was fast-forwarding to see if I had any other big words coming up.

I'd like to go back to standup. I don't like to think I've done my last gig. At the moment it terrifies me, I get really nervous. It's a great buzz when it goes well.

The only time I don't get nervous is if I'm doing a home club in L.A. and I know all of my friends there because then I play to my friends. When I first started doing comedy, I hated it when my friends came; it made me more nervous. Now I just try to make them laugh.

The first night you walk down to a comedy club, at least for me, I had my voice, and then I went on stage and I lost it.

Here's the thing, with comedy - and I learned this from Will Ferrell - you can't be ashamed. If you're doing comedy, you have to fully commit to the joke. Shame is not part of it. If you act shy or uncomfortable about your body, that makes the audience shy and uncomfortable. And in a comedy you just want them to loosen up and laugh.

I love comedies. I love watching them. I think I've always been afraid of being on them a little bit.

Stand-up is live, so I'm used to being live for most of my career. It's interesting.

You can't be a proper comic unless you've been out on stage and felt the fear.

If you're a comic, you don't have a rehearsal room; you rehearse on stage. My main concern is remembering everything. I've written lots of material, but how do you memorise 90 minutes? That's one hell of a long speech. I've always had problems with that.

I'm not a stand up at all, it's such a fear of mine. My sister does it, and she's really great at it.

I do love live performing, but I'm not a stand-up naturally, and I don't like the lifestyle of working just in the evenings at clubs and stuff - not a natural gig-er.

I haven't really done a lot of comedy. It's something that terrifies me.

I never wanted to be road comic.

I had some friends that tried it down there, and I went to a couple of open mics, and I just kind of got this... this sick urge to try it instead of just watching it.

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.'

Even on TV appearances or big shows, I don't know if I've ever been as nervous as I was my first time doing stand-up. I just remember getting offstage and sitting down, and my right knee was just shaking from the adrenaline.

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.

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.

I have performed my one-man show '700 Sundays' over 400 times now. There were only two times that I can honestly say I was nervous. The first was when I knew Mel Brooks was in the audience, and the second was when Sid Caesar came.

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