Nicole Byer Quotes

With comedians, you have that understanding that we're trying to get laughs.

When you're doing stand-up, you want to stand onstage and, to the extent that you can, uncomplicatedly entertain.

If you work at comedy too laboriously, you can kill what's funny in the joke.

Someone said to me at a party once, 'Oh, yeah, you're a comedian? Then how come you're not funny now?' And I just wanted to say, 'Well, I'm just going to take this conversation we're having and then repeat that to strangers, and then that's the joke. You're the joke later.'

I had no desire to get up onstage and tell jokes. I prefer to stand next to really funny people.

I think a comedian has to be low status on some level; that gives you the right to do all sorts of jokes about all sorts of different kinds of people.

I never feel like it'll be something where like, 'Aha, I've got it. I'm funny for the rest of my life. I don't need to tell jokes anymore. I just am comedy.'

Comedy is a very approval-oriented field.

Actually I never did stand up. I'm not that funny.

Jackie Gleason said that comedy is the most exacting form of dramatic art, because it has an instant critic: laughter.

Comedy is all about having a point of view, and it's also about power.

I like comedy as a group sport.

I'm not a great joke writer, which is odd for a comic to say, but I'm not.

Neil Hamburger writes such cutting jokes.

You know, I've never thought of myself as a comedian.

In real life, comedians aren't funny.

You can't teach someone to be funny, but you can teach comic timing. If you listen to a good comic, you can learn how to put it on a page.

I'm not much of a joke writer.

Comedy is so hard to do, so it was very cool to do dead pan humor.

Kind of the exhausting thing about doing pure comedy, or something that's broader, is you're kind of a slave to the laugh. If it's not funny, then there's not much point in doing it. The kind of ueber-objective is to make people laugh. You always have to have that in the back of your mind, 'Eh, I've got to figure out a way to make this funny.'

When you have a writing partner and you're writing a comedy, your goal is to make each other laugh.

Comedians, we're just people who whine. But we happen to be funny when we whine.

Comedy is very difficult. I love it because when you do it right, it's the best feeling in the world.

I did stand-up, weird and ignorant stuff about my career - anything for a laugh.

The funnier the material, the funnier I could make it.