Marlon Wayans Quotes

What I love is getting a new joke, or a premise like a sketch idea or a movie idea. That's the best feeling for a comedian.

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.

Late night is no different than making a film, really, except that it's faster, and if you do a crap one, you can do a better one tomorrow. Writing a novel and doing stand-up - that stuff is very similar.

So many of these comics are just frustrated singers or actors - they want to get a gig doing a sitcom. It's paint-by-the-numbers comedy, lame joke-telling. They're drawn to it as a career move.

It's all about story and character with me, and I don't care if the job is on daytime or prime time or the web. Hey, give me a good character and someone to listen, and I'll do my acting on a street corner.

Anybody with a sharp brain and a mic can become a comedian, but there's a need to move beyond it. The audience wants to witness the marriage of theatre, comedy and something more.

My job is mostly to entertain and be funny.

I really loved what I was doing being creative and being funny as a stand-up comedian.

With comedy, it's really hard to tell if something's working on the page - you really need the actors to bring it alive. The scariest part is if people will laugh or not.

I wanted to be a comedian.

Coming up with comedy is hard, man. Those bits aren't easy to think of!

I usually work from the inside out but sometimes in comedy it's fun to work from the outside in.

I've just written this six-part sketch comedy series, which I've never done before. And I don't know how to pitch it. Am I supposed to just pick up a camera and put stuff on YouTube? Is that how it works?

You write what makes you laugh, and you hope that the audience agree, and so far they do.

Comedy is not funny. Comedy is hard work and timing and lots and lots of rehearsals.

A lot of critics object to what I do, but I got into comedy to make people laugh, and I've always worked hard.

I love the stuff that makes you laugh and cry. It kind of sucker-punches you a little bit. That's the thing that most interests me as a performer, in addition to telling the most captivating story.

For a comedy to work, magic has to happen.

I found out a long time ago that if I didn't have a good story for a song, I could just make one up! Now it seems over half the stories in my show are made up. The funny thing is, those seem to be the ones that resonate the most with the audiences.

My younger sister's a comedian. She has a sketch comedy group in Chicago called Schadenfreude and I look at her with such admiration and envy because it's such an amazing thing to make someone laugh.

The 'Homecoming King' show started off as a storytelling show that I had done; I worked with Greg Walloch to develop it and build it into something bigger.

Movies are really hard to make. You put a lot of work into them, and you want people to see them.

I got into stand-up because I love stand-up. Specifically in stand-up, I love jokes. I love short, structured ideas and a punch line.

If all you have is satire, your show will close. Even if all you have is comedy, your show will close. The hardest thing is not making people laugh: the hardest thing is building an emotional story. Any child can make a group of adults laugh.

I live for comedy. I've been doing it for such a long time. Comedy is hard in itself.