Tom Segura Quotes

It takes both courage and talent to stand up in front of fellow human beings and make them crack a smile, and at the same time keep it clean.

You instinctively discover how to entertain an audience.

I started doing standup when I was in college, and I would incorporate a lot of characters into my act.

Stand-up was my entree into the entertainment world. I didn't have to act out somebody else's words. I could just stand there with a microphone, and nobody would interrupt me. It's the most narcissistic thing you could probably do.

You can teach somebody how to be a brain surgeon, but you cannot teach them how to walk on a stage and make people laugh.

I like to warm them up with stand-up, get them into my world and tone, and then bring other characters on. There's so much you can do theatrically on stage. You keep changing the direction and angles, and then people don't get bored.

I've always liked being on the performance end of it. I've come up with different ideas, but as far as being a creative writer, I'm not sure about that. I've always liked the performance end of it and wrestling, getting in the ring in front of a live crowd.

I need to keep my ad-libbing skills honed and make sure I'm able to banter with people and treat topics a bit more light-heartedly. But as a stand-up, first and foremost, my job is to make sure that I can write the routine that hopefully people will talk about when something big happens.

I got into standup because I wanted to be an actor, and then I ended up loving standup for the next eleven years.

The moment for me, thinking I might actually want to do comedy professionally, was when I did public speaking at school. I found out I was good at getting up in front of class. In the fifth grade, I did a speech on comedy.

Sometimes I start off shows by explaining to people that it's just a bunch of stories - I always say 'It's like standup, just less funny.'

I study entertainment and apply it to myself to one day become the greatest WWE superstar we have, and it's a lot of work. So I write jokes and material every day... you have to keep people's attention, one way or another.

The biggest impact that acting and theater had was, of course, stage presence, but it also had a big impact on my writing.

I've been entertaining men with my comedy for many, many years, and I don't plan on stopping.

The beautiful thing about stand-up advice is that it applies to anybody, any gender, any race, any age. The best thing you can do - everybody will tell you - is get on stage as much as you can. I would add to that: get on stage as much as you can - with the people you admire.

I started doing improv comedy in 2007, and I think it was that that gave me the confidence to try doing stand-up!

I was a drama teacher, so I had the opportunity to show off in front of a captive audience. I essentially did 13 years of stand-up. Whether my pupils would agree that I was remotely interesting or not is another question.

My dad was just so charismatic and witty. One day, I hope people say that I was just as good as my dad on the mic in my own way. I will never be saying 'Space Mountain' or 'limousine riding,' but I hope people say I can control an audience, that I was as captivating as him.

I definitely enjoyed being in front of an audience, making people laugh, and telling stories, so when I realized I could do all three at the same time, that was it.

I've done comedy on stage, in fact it is one of my strong points.

Stand-up is not something that you're good at right away. You have to do it a ton. But, I think I got to shave a year off because I didn't have to get over stage fright.

When I was in third grade I taught myself ventriloquism... What's hard is to learn to be an entertainer and make people laugh. I was a few years out of college before I felt I had enough material. Then in 1988 I moved to L.A. and started to do some shows at comedy clubs.

I've always thought stand-up comedians were the oral storytellers of our time, because they know rhetoric, they know delivery, they know timing, they know all of these things that you can only learn by telling a story out loud and interacting with an audience.

I can work as a writer, but I wanted to do stand-up.

One place that I really feel comfortable is being a comedienne. I'm very socially inept. There's so many things that I can not do in life, and this is, like, the one thing that I have mastery over. It's my world. And anybody who's coming to the show, it's like they're coming because they know that this is my world.