Chris Gethard Quotes

I've been really terrible in a lot of things because I learned by making mistakes. That makes you a different kind of actor, because you have to figure out for yourself what you do.

I've bombed on stage millions and millions of times. And that's part of it. You go up with a half-baked idea, and you bomb, and so what? Nothing bad happens if you bomb.

I did one of the worst shows for that kind of thing in Northampton, Massachusetts, which is one of the most liberal spots on the planet. There were numerous people who walked out, somebody had thrown a beer, I had people yelling and screaming.

What I've realized in the last year, 80% of my act has already happened to me, and it's not until you retell the story at a party or to a friend or it comes up on the podcast that you, I don't know why I'm not doing that onstage!

Of all the things we are wrong about, error might well top the list ... We are wrong about what it means to be wrong. Far from being a sign of intellectual inferiority, the capacity to err is crucial to human cognition. Far from being a moral flaw, it is inextricable from some of our most humane and honourable qualities: empathy, optimism, imagination, conviction, and courage. And far from being a mark of indifference or intolerance, wrongness is a vital part of how we learn and change. Thanks to error, we can revise our understanding of ourselves and amend our ideas about the world.

Hosting the Emmys is a challenge for me. I guess it's the equivalent of someone who needs to climb a mountain or jump out of a plane. It's that kind of thing, where this could go terribly wrong. And I love the feeling of when it goes right.

The first time I got on stage I was 10 years old and I did impressions. I did cartoon characters and I really got the bug for this life when I saw that people were laughing and saw the attention I was getting.

Can I read it? They really liked it when I did it.

I've had shows where you think, "Is this going well? I can't tell," and then you say goodnight and you get this ovation. They're sorta like a theater audience. I've learned that much; that they're not always going to be doing backflips - but I'll never figure it out. Because sometimes you walk up there, and they're so excited, and then other times, it's just... But sometimes an audience is bad, and you can tell them they're bad, and that sort of breaks the ice a bit.

I've failed a million times on stage. I've listened to notes that I knew weren't right. I've pitched ideas and let other people change them, knowing that it was the wrong choice. The question you have to ask yourself is: How do you want to fail? Do you want to fail in a way that feels like it respects your tastes and value system?

By and large, I seem to have made more mistakes than any others of whom I know, but have learned thereby to make ever swifter acknowledgment of the errors and thereafter immediately set about to deal more effectively with the truths disclosed by the acknowledgment of erroneous assumptions.

Mistakes are a fact of life. If you are willing to be wrong then you have earned the right to be right.

I think anybody in front of a crowd is a comedian.

In standup, you don't have anything near you except a microphone.

Because if you were the problem, chances were you could also be the solution. The only way to find out was to take another shot.

Having a live audience makes a world of difference to the acting. It keeps your timing sharp. When something doesn't work, the actor can sense the reaction from the audience and quickly move on.

Which only goes to show that the best of us must sometimes eat our words,' Dumbledore went on, smiling.

That is the greatest source of my anxiety on this film [The Hobbit], is that I'm going to be lynched.

I think it was 89.2% cheers and 11.8% boos, but I'm used to that.

I couldn't worry about whether I'm gonna make it onstage or not. You can't. You just gotta do it. And if you do, you do, and if you don't, you don't, and then something else happens. That's the point of the live performance.

If someone were to say, 'Well, what would you have done differently?' I'd say, 'Nothing'. I think you need to make mistakes.

When you're making records, you develop, and so you hear the things you want to move away from. It stings a little, but you know, you gotta own it too. You've got to just go, "You know, I wasn't afraid to learn in front of people, so I give myself a little credit for not being afraid of anything."

Be sensitive to your mistakes. Put it on the wall for a couple of weeks. It may be that you can learn more from the study of your own work than from others.

It probably does make it more difficult to enjoy a good laugh at someone who's onstage, seemingly yelling at you. But I'm not yelling at the audience, I'm yelling at the world. It genuinely sucks if people are taking it that way. But I'm not talking to individuals.

I have had to eat my own words many times, and I have found it a very nourishing diet.