Conan O'Brien Quotes

Hosting 'SNL' was something I'd always wanted to do. The show allowed me to play to my strengths - mixing music with comedy seemed like a way into that world.

I'm a performer. I do comedy and music, and I blend them together. My band is 'Nasty Delicious!'.

I do an act, and I've been doing an act for 50 years. I do a variety show, which is a musical comedy show. I do comedy, and I do singing, Broadway show tunes and different songs that I like. Been doing it for many, many years.

In some ways, comedy and something like a musical do go hand-in-hand.

I wasn't a trained actor, I was trained in musical comedy theater, and when you do that, the audience is completely part of the thing. It's like Elizabethan theater. You play the scene, and then you turn - the audience is part of it.

Performing music is a way to do comedy, but without the obligation to do a solid hour, hour and half of a standup. I could intersperse it with music, so it became a really good format for me.

My background is in musical comedy.

Imagine the talented love-child of Andr Previn and Lucille Ball.

There are two types of actors. There's the actors who can acknowledge that they could never do standup comedy. Then there's the pretentious ones, who believe that acting is harder than standup comedy. I definitely don't think it is. I also think making a comedy is substantially harder than making a drama.

Performing comedy, you develop a rhythm of ideas and laughs. I live for it.

If it's just the voice, then you can only do jokes. It's not really even about the impression so much. It's about the take and what you do with the person. I try to get a character across with the impression.

Now it looks like I'll be known as the musical comedy guy. Which is good news for me. Or I'll be known as the New Zealand idiot.

Funny songs, that’s my ticket. I can’t remember when it started or why it started, it’s just something that I NEEDED.

As a live stand-up comedy performer, I have the benefit of choosing real entrance music.

Me and Conan O'Brien and Robert Smigel and Dana Carvey wrote a script called 'Hans and Franz: The Girlyman Dilemma,' and it was going to be co-produced with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and he was going to co-star in it. We had a deal with Sony, we got paid to write it, and it was a musical, but it never got made because...I think Arnold kind of backed out at the last minute because he was getting cold feet because ;The Last Action Hero' had come out, where he was parodying himself. But it was a really funny script, and I wish it could've seen the light, because I think it would've done really well.

As far as just my stand-up is concerned, I don't care about changing anyone's mind. I'm not making an argument. I'm a guy doing comedy.

I believe that comedians do what they do, and then they get credit or criticism for doing it. There's nothing planned about this.

Everybody is different. Some comedy is more musical like Steven Wright. His is a pillar of comedy to me. He invented a whole form and all his jokes are poems. So it's different. I wanted to do it like George Carlin. Now I do it like me.

I learned as a young man that I don't write jokes, but that I can deliver more mundane material and get a laugh. I call myself a humorist.

Knowing comedy is knowing human nature.

I first wanted to be a comedian when I was six or seven and my dad showed me Laurel and Hardy's "Perfect Day" on tv.

I'm not a natural comedian, as an artist. I studied comedy growing up. I would watch Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence, all day.

One of the funniest lines in my show was written for me by Alan Bursky. I really want to learn this routine!

I loved musicals, love them still. But also, I'm really inspired by comedy music.

I love Ron Howard, he's a wonderful director, incredibly prepared. But I have to criticize my performance in that movie. It all took place in one day. My character was having a bad day, so she's having a bad day throughout the whole movie. But this was a comedy, and I think I was too serious, too dense. Yes, I think that describes my failure there.