Sean Lock Quotes

When you're doing stand-up, you can comment if something fails, get a laugh from that.

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.

Stand-up is more of an organic process. An imagined dialogue with the audience.

Stand-up comedy is not a man's job. It's an alpha job: To be the only person in a room with a microphone who's allowed to talk.

At the end of the day, stand-up comedy is like acting when the audience are the other characters that I'm acting with.

I love storytelling and I love just relating directly to an audience. That's why we do theatre, it's because we love contact with the audience. We love the fact that the audience will change us. The way the audience responds makes us change our performance.

Billy Crystal knows how to make people laugh. He's got 30 years on stage... there's no telling him what's funny.

I never used to tell jokes on stage. Now I'm cutting up jokes all night long.

I had a flair for comedy and could give a sustained performance.

With stand-up, it doesn't matter who you are. If the audience claps because they love your movies, that clapping stops after five seconds, and then it's your job to make them laugh.

When you're doing stand-up, you want to stand onstage and, to the extent that you can, uncomplicatedly entertain.

Patrice O'Neal is the best comic I ever saw.

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

Whenever I go on a show with a comedian I just counter punch.

It is a great rush to come up with a joke that gets a good response from the audience. It's gold!

When people come to see my stand-up, they get a chance to see my characters interact with each other.

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

Unquestionably, standup comedy is and has always been an art form.

Jack Benny was, without a doubt, the bravest comedian I have ever seen work. He wasn't afraid of silence. He would take as long as it took to tell the story.

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.

The way I view comedy clubs is, people are drinking, they're ordering food, they're out for the night, and there's also a person onstage talking. And with the theater, they came to the theater, and they're waiting to hear what you say. So you'd better have something to say.

Even when I was an engineer, I was a comic on my job. At birthday and holiday parties, I was the one scheduling and emceeing. If you work on your gift, and you're good, it will shine through.

Few comedians can go to their shows and have people yell out bits that they want to hear. It's like going to see your favorite band and yelling out your favorite songs and to say the words along with them.

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 certainly tried to talk about less complex things, but I've had to accept that it's just not what I do. That isn't to say that my shows are depressing - they aren't. At least, I hope they aren't! The problem I have with stories about happy things is that they don't require any skill from a comic - they just repeat the details verbatim.