Nikki Glaser Quotes

When I was younger, I listened to the greats: Winters, Mel and Carl, Nichols and May, Pryor, Carlin, Klein, Berman and lots of Lenny Bruce albums. But once I started doing fairly well, I didn't want to hear anybody's jokes or premises.

I'm not the sort of comedian who wants to make audiences think about politics. I'm not clever in that way.

The job of a comedian is to make people laugh, but a lot of my interests are in politics so I'm going to use that.

I really enjoyed doing stand-up. Andy Kaufman was a big hero of mine. I tried to do conceptual stuff like he tried to do.

It's easy being a humorist when you've got the whole government working for you.

What makes me laugh? Richard Nixon always made me laugh.

The most influential thing was the two Chris Rock specials that came out when I was in high school. I was obsessed with that stuff.

I have deep comedic roots, and I want to be funny.

Jon Stewart kills me. I love him. And Bill Maher. He does an hour on HBO. But entirely political. It is awfully rough, but he does make me laugh.

When I talk to Steve Martin, he's joyful when he talks about comedy.

I wish I was this dark genius artist - like Richard Pryor or something.

Armando Iannucci is one of my heroes. As I was growing up, he was probably the most influential comic voice that I had.

I think comedy and satire are a very important part of democracy, and it's important we are able to laugh at the idiosyncrasies or the follies or vanities of people in power.

I don't consider myself a political comedian because it's so hard. It takes time away from me saying terrible things about TV.

I get very confused about being called a comedian, because when you say 'I'm a comedian,' people expect you to crack a joke. Maybe I use laughter and humour to make people think. I don't know what you call that - a humourist? A satirist? A pessimistic comedian? I don't know. Satirists can be very dark.

Larry David just makes me laugh.

I listened to George Carlin when I was a kid and knew every word of his routines.

If I can make you laugh and learn, I want to be like George Carlin and Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy and Sam Kinison and Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle. I want to be of that ilk, I don't want to just make you laugh, I want to make you think.

My jokes have definitely changed. 'SNL' has helped with that, because when you're on 'SNL,' you have to kind of pay attention to the news. I feel like my material has gotten smarter now.

If I modeled myself after anybody, it probably would have been Richard Pryor.

But my comedy hero was Stephen Chow. His deadpan comedy, all the stuff he wrote like 'From Beijing with Love,' it's incredibly funny.

I remember being captivated by Steve Coogan and Eddie Izzard and wanting to do what they did. That generation of comedians was my main influence.

I consider myself a disciple of Norman Lear. And one of the things he did was topic-driven humor.

I'm a huge fan of Jonathan Winters. He's influenced everyone who's ever done improvisational comedy. You look to Jonathan Winters for inspiration. He paved the way. If you've ever made up something on the spot and made somebody laugh, you can credit Jonathan Winters with inspiration.

Reading Alan Zweibel makes me laugh out loud. And yet it is not a particularly funny name.