Todd Barry Quotes

A lot of the comedians nowadays just do comedy as a stepping stone. Take for example Dane Cook. The guy is huge. The main reason he got into it is to do what he is doing now: film and television work.

I'm doing comedy development at National Lampoon.

I'm looking to be the next comedy mogul.

If I could make crazy money just doing stand-up, that's what I would do.

I always loved comedy, but it never seemed like something that I could do professionally.

I always had one goal, and that was to be a real funny stand-up comic, and that's pretty much what I'm doing. And everything else is kind of like gravy - TV, movies.

[Adoption] could turn you into an exquisite comedian. Ask Richard Pryor's ghost.

One of the things that's funniest about the entertainment industry and comedy is that people go 'Oh, you're great, but I don't know what to do with you.' The great thing about the Internet is that nobody has to figure out what to do with you. You can figure out what to do with you, and you can say, 'I made this thing, and I'm going to put it out, and now if people want to come see me and buy things from me they can.'

When you're a comedian, the Holy Grail is an hour long HBO special.

My first year on 'SNL', I made $90,000 dollars.

I think comedy is difficult, and I'm amazed so many people want to do it. I'll be buying jeans and somebody will say, "I'm a comedian" - the guy selling you the jeans. The desire to be a comedian is weird. I found it weird myself to want to be one; I was a schoolboy when I wanted to be one but I didn't know how to do it. That was 50 years ago, so times have changed greatly. There seems to be a long line of people desperate to do it and most of them are quite good.

Jason Alexander is a committed actor, he went from working on a show about nothing to actually doing nothing.

I got into comedy because I wanted to get into writing.

I like to read, but otherwise I'm just your average, self-obsessed comedian. It's pretty much all I think about.

I think both of us [ with Steve Oram], once we decided to do comedy, knew that we would have to come to London to do that.

I started as a stand-up comedian. I wanted to be Carol Burnett when I was growing up.

Comedy is a very lucrative business now, but when everyone first went into it, it didn't make sense from a financial standpoint.

I liked comedy, but didn't know it was something you could do for a living. I actually wanted to be an attorney.

I know it's going to sound cheesy, but I love show business. I love doing comedy, I love that I get to do all this with my friends.

I do feel good doing them [family-friendly movies], but it's not going to be my way of life. I'm a comedian.

I sat down and wrote some jokes and went to the talent show, got up on stage, fell in love with it and never turned back.

Most people in the world of comedy at least are multi-hyphenates, so people who direct are also writers.

Though part of me had always wanted to be a comedian, another part of me had always wanted to be Bryant Gumbel or Dan Rather.

For Joey Bishop, always was kind of the lost soul, so I did a traffic joke.

I don't want to be a TV star for the sake of being on TV. I want to have a TV show that's based around my comedy.