Bill Hicks Quotes

I never did standup before. It just looked like it was really hard, looked like there was like up days and down days - and I'm too emotionally unstable for that. I need to always be funny and always be loved.

If I'm a bad mood, I can't go on stage and smile.

I would just sweat so much. I'd be dry when I run on the stage. By the time I got in front of the microphone, it just, just like a river pouring out. I don't know what made that happen. It took five years for that to stop happening to me.

I was asked to act when I couldn't act. I was asked to sing 'Funny Face' when I couldn't sing, and dance with Fred Astaire when I couldn't dance - and do all kinds of things I wasn't prepared for. Then I tried like mad to cope with it.

I'm not an acting monk or anything. I'm not, like, the most well-adjusted actor.

I find in film acting that however many years you have done it for, you can feel totally relaxed and at ease with the people around you, absolutely wonderful, then roll camera and a little part of you goes, 'Ugh'. It is learning how to manage that.

I don't like the pressure to try to tell the best jokes. I'm not good at jokes.

Never perform for your family. They either laugh too hard or not at all.

Previously I always thought it was just tactical and technique, but every match has become almost mental and physical - I try to push myself to move well. I try to push myself not to get upset and stay positive, and that's what my biggest improvement is over all those years. Under pressure I can see things very clear.

Going before an audience of people who expect you to be funny is tough. Going before an audience that expect you to be boring, and then being a little funny, is much easier. I prefer easier.

Does everyone feel this way? When I was young, I was perpetually overconfident or insecure. Either I felt completely useless, unattractive, and worthless, or that I was pretty much a success, and everything I did was bound to succeed. When I was confident, I could overcome the hardest challenges. But all it took was the smallest setback for me to be sure that I was utterly worthless. Regaining my self-confidence had nothing to do with success...whether I experienced it as a failure or triumph was utterly dependent on my mood.

It's dangerous to get calm. You need some nerves to work from, it's good energy. It's not good to have no nerves. You'd fall asleep on stage.

All actors are terrified - they just learn how to control it.

a struggle with shyness is in every actor more than anyone can imagine.

You have to realize, when you're a comedian, that you have to have a thick skin. And trust me, being onstage in front of people is already difficult enough. Somebody's personal attack in an email is not as hard as getting onstage.

What a sad business is being funny!

Every once a week, I get up and feel that I cannot act any more. I just get very unsure of myself. But, once I give my first shot, I'm back on track. Insecurity isn't bad, it makes me work harder.

For a while, I thought I was going mad. At last, I became reconciled to my despair. The medications helped, too, I thought, sir.

The bigger the dam of patience, the worse the flood when the dam breaks.

It's very difficult once you've been on telly because people know what you do. They give you a little bit of grace but then they're harsher if you're not funny, so you have to be funny.

I was not self-destructive, though I almost destroyed myself. In the end, I turned away from stand-up with a tired swivel of my head...

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.

A further sign of health is that we don't become undone by fear and trembling, but we take it as a message that it's time to stop struggling and look directly at what's threatening us.

A healthy strong ego, with plenty of self-esteem, does not feel itself threatened by every innocent remark.

Emotions were like wild horses and it required wisdom to be able to control them