Doug Stanhope Quotes

It's a sick thing, right: people are afraid of public speaking. I do public speaking, except my public speaking involves the audience only having one type of emotion and one type of reaction. If they have anything other than laughter, it's a failure. That's an absurd thing for a human to try to seek. The main thing to realize is that whatever I say, it's my truth and I believe in it, and if I don't get a laugh off that, then it's not working.

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

I don't really do stand-up.

The very first time I did stand-up, that was terrifying.

Although I do stand-up - doing actual stage work is terrifying for me.

It's hard to get laughs when you're new.

I was the class clown, but I was a reluctant class clown because I was always and still am somewhat embarrassed by performing. I have terrible stage fright, and I don't like being in front of people.

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

The whole thing about working in front of the camera is to make people laugh when they're not supposed to.

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.

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.

I started doing stand-up in college.

I do comedy shows. I make fun of myself, first of all.

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

I failed to get into drama school, and my best friend told me I should do stand-up instead. I was always doing gags and voices, so he booked a gig for me without telling me. I only had four days to write it. I did a seven-minute set; the first four minutes were terrible, but the last two were amazing.

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.

Most open-mic experiences I had were okay.

I don't like speaking publicly when I don't have to be funny.

Comedy kind of terrifies me. I feel pretty intimidated.

I never go see live comedy shows because I just sit in the audience thinking, "Here's what I would say. Here's what I would do if I got up there." It drives me crazy.

One of the first things you ever learn as a stand-up is don't show fear.

Comedy is very important. For one thing, it keeps you sane. But it's not really a conversion. I mean, it's marginally a conversion, because if people tune in or go to a nightclub or even watch television, and hear that a lot of other people are laughing at something you thought was not funny, at least it'll force you to reconsider.

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.

That's a lovely experience when you make an audience laugh. Then the nerves go away for a bit. And sometimes you do things then that you've never done before that are really funny.

On Friday night, it was fun [to know] that if you bombed, or whatever was going on, that you'd be on TV at 11. It was a cool feeling, and you'd get a couple hundred dollars.