Adam Sandler Quotes

I always wanted to be a stand-up comedian, even as a kid. Me and my dad would watch 'Evening at the Improv' on A&E.

I started doing stand-up when I was 16, my junior year in high school. My two friends and I would sit at home watching stand-up. They kept saying I should try it, and so I did.

I considered myself a professional comedian because the club would pay me $20.

I was 14, when I wanted to be an actor. My parents were basically like, "This is a very hard life, and you have to be really serious about it, and show us that you're serious about it. You can't drop out of school." They strongly encouraged me not to act professionally until I finished college, which I didn't. And I think they should have been horrified! It's a really hard life. I'd be really scared if I had a child who wanted to be an actor.

The biggest piece of advice that I give young comedians is: If it's your goal to get where I'm at, go do something else. Because you'll never get here. Never. The odds are so bad. Because not only do you have to be a really, really strong comedian but you also have to be lucky. And most people don't get that combination.

How can a young person learn whether he chose the correct way? He thinks he has a special idea, and then he discovers that he is completely inappropriate for it.

There's still time to change the road you're on...

My father could have been a great comedian, but he didn't believe that that was possible for him, and so he made a conservative choice. Instead, he got a safe job as an accountant. When I was 12 years old, he was let go from that safe job, and our family had to do whatever we could to survive. I learned many great lessons from my father, not the least of which was that you can fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.

Comedy pays the bills if I can't find a film.

So I kept it to myself. Then some of my classmates started to come down to the comedy club, taking a girl out, and they started finding out I was a stand-up comedian.

If I'm not on tour, I can run down to the comedy club and do a little stand-up. If you're an actor, you can't go - I guess there's forms of it.

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

I first wanted to be a comedian when I was six or seven and my dad showed me Laurel and Hardy's "Perfect Day" on tv.

I've always been partial to comedy. I love the idea of working on a comedic scene.

Everyone thinks I'm a comedian - which I am and are. I was born into a comedic family but I'm trained as an actor.

I'm looking to be the next comedy mogul.

I never had the confidence to say I was going to be in front of the camera as a comedian until I saw Eddie Murphy years later.

When I was 17, I read a profile of Carol Leifer. Since then, I wanted to be her. I still want to be her.

I think my parents wanted me to do something very normal, have a normal person job and not be confronted by the instability of an artistic pursuit, but there wasn't really a lot they could do to stop me. I was, at one point, going to go to law school when I finished high school, but the next day I got accepted into acting school and there was no real question in my mind of what I was going to do.

Somebody came and directed a show at my high school. I approached it with sort of the sensibility - "Oh, I know that music. I'm going to go audition." I ended up being in it and I sang and it was mind-altering - to me, to my parents, who had never heard me sing like that. It put a stop to everything else that I was doing - every sport that I played, every instrument, it was all dropped because nothing felt like that. I feel really lucky that I found my passion at that point. There are people who are adults who don't know what their passion is and go through life doing "a job."

I always remember writing a page of jokes for a comedian and handing it to him backstage at a club and he read it and then took his cigarette lighter and lit the page on...

So much of what happened to me is good fortune. But I would say: Try to get a job that gives you some time; get your sleep and a little bit of food; and work as much as you can. There's so much enjoyment in doing what you love. Maybe this will open doors, and you'll find a way to do what you love.

I had a very high opinion of my father's judgement of things and he said, "You better get a job that pays the bills because a writer doesn't make any money. If possible, get a job that allows you to write in your spare time."

I always wanted to be a comedian, even when I was a little kid. I had a funny father who was in the news business, by the way. He was a radio news guy. So the news was always in my house, and funny was always in my house. It was sort of just baked into the DNA that I would do this for a living, but I can remember being less than 10 years old and dreaming about being a comedian.

I'm a comic because I don't want to do the nine-to-five, I have to modify that and say I'm a comic because I have an inability to do a nine-to-five.