Bryan Callen Quotes

Onstage I'm the one in control - I'm not at the mercy of how an editor chooses to put the scene together later. I can do things onstage that I would never do in real life. It's very freeing.

Stand-up comedy is mine: it's my entity; it's my brand; I own it. I do it when I want to do it.

The best part about stand-up is that you control everything. Period.

But with 'Newsrevue' I started doing some characters, and I just loved how you were in control. You could write something that day and go and do it that night, rather than waiting for a job that involves other people. So I did character stand-up, and then proper stand-up, and I loved it; I got addicted.

For me, the way I stay consistent is through stand-up comedy.

I think I have always tried to connect my comedy to my art.

I just love entertaining. I will do anything - stand-up comedy, video games, fencing, internet shorts - I just want to keep being lucky enough to entertain people anyway I can. I try never to limit my art to a medium.

Whether it's writing a monologue or writing standup or writing a screenplay or writing a play, I think staying involved in the creation of your own work empowers you in a way, even if you don't ever do it. It gives you a sense of ownership and a sense of purpose, which I think as an actor is really important.

It's also that comedians don't have the kind of narcissism that actors have. They're writers who perform their own material. It's more interesting. And they're sexy because they risk more. Stand-up comedians risk more than anyone.

That's what comedy is like: You have to force yourself out in the world because you're always one experience away from new material.

Doing comedy was liberating in a way.

Stand-up comedy is something that you have to strive to do, multiple times a night, every night, to be good.

I really like doing stand-up, because it gives you an immense amount of freedom. You haven't got anyone telling you what to do. It's great to have that much power over what you do. You don't have that in television.

I needed to be more self-determining, and the most self-determining thing you can do in comedy is stand-up.

Stand-up is my favorite thing I've ever done. There's so much independence.

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.

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.

I think comedy I've learned is really just about relaxing and trusting yourself and allowing yourself to fail.

I never thought I'd end up doing comedy, but actually, it's been something I've really relished the challenge of and ended up doing quite a bit of.

As a comedian, you're kind of like a blues musician; you have to live a little bit.

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.

Stand-up will always be my first love, and it has been the primary way I've expressed myself since I was 17.

I have no qualifications to do anything else and there weren't any formal application forms you had to fill in for stand-up, so I thought I'd give that a twist.

I came away from 'Saturday Night Live' feeling very well represented. I felt, and I still feel like, they let me do so much stuff that I wanted to do. Stuff that I almost didn't even know what it was.

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