Bill Maher Quotes

Stand-up is not something that you're good at right away. You have to do it a ton. But, I think I got to shave a year off because I didn't have to get over stage fright.

Stand-up, I find it really difficult. It's not really my thing.

Stand-up. It's the only place I'm comfortable.

In standup, you don't have anything near you except a microphone. There's something a lot more self-conscious feeling when there's cameras coming in for close-ups. It makes you very aware.

I started standup at age nineteen. I decided that the only way I was going to try show business as a career was if I could make total strangers laugh.

People often tell me that they have no idea how I can do standup. The idea of trying to make a large group of strangers laugh is, for many, absolutely petrifying - and it is - but there are ways of gradually developing the material that can ease the fear.

Stand-up is an amazing art form, I think, because it's all about you having complete control of the situation, but absolutely none.

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.

One of the reasons I still do stand-up is because it was so hard in the beginning that I feel like it would be such a shame not to redeem it that it's all fun.

When you do stand-up, you're just concerned with trying to leave with some semblance of human dignity at the end of your performance.

My first open mic, I drank a full pitcher of beer by myself. I wasn't afraid of being in front of people as much as, Is this funny?

One place that I really feel comfortable is being a comedienne. I'm very socially inept. There's so many things that I can not do in life, and this is, like, the one thing that I have mastery over. It's my world. And anybody who's coming to the show, it's like they're coming because they know that this is my world.

I could never do stand-up because it's that thing of having to get up on stage. And out of every 10 jokes you tell, nine of them have to get a really good response.

I still do standup.

I've been doing stand-up since '89.

When I was doing stand-up, I was about twenty, and I really think that that's a little too young. I didn't have a whole lot of life experience to draw on.

When you're a stand-up, you play in front of 600 people, and it's all about timing. I could never do stand-up comedy; it would be way too hard for me.

Once you become a comedian, you accept that people are just going to yell stuff at you.

You can't be a proper comic unless you've been out on stage and felt the fear.

I'm not a stand up at all, it's such a fear of mine. My sister does it, and she's really great at it.

I do love live performing, but I'm not a stand-up naturally, and I don't like the lifestyle of working just in the evenings at clubs and stuff - not a natural gig-er.

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

To be honest, I don't know really what I do on stage.

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

I'm hardly a known name, but I don't want to go, like, 'Oh, people call me a storyteller comedian, let me just go up and just talk about my day.' I don't want that to happen.