Demetri Martin Quotes

When someone says to me, do you do stand-up I say absolutely not. I like to think of it as a theatrical performance. With me the show changes maybe five to ten percent every night. Of course, whatever I see in front of me and sometimes I get on a little run about it and it changes the show. And my delivery is such that people who have seen me many times say Gee, I never heard that before. Actually, they have, but I might have changed it around.

Stand-up, for me, is really more of an addiction, so you have to feed the beast whenever you can.

Stand-up is still my job. That is the thing I wanted to get into when I was 21. You cannot beat the immediacy of it, making people laugh without any interruptions or edits.

I think anybody in front of a crowd is a comedian.

I'm very lucky in that I've gotten to do a lot of things. But if you ever put a gun to my head and said, "You can only do one," I'd think it would be stand-up. I think it's the coolest job in the world.

I never used to tell jokes on stage. Now I'm cutting up jokes all night long.

I do comedy shows. I make fun of myself, first of all.

Stand-up is an amazing art form, I think, because it's all about you having complete control of the situation, but absolutely none.

In my Comedy Club sets, I just work on what is fresh and try to build that show as long as I can. I don't like to do burnt material on stage. Even though my crowd loves to hear me do old stuff, I don't like to do old stuff.

To this day, to this very day, except for television, I've never had a writer. Anything I've ever done on the stage, happened on the stage and I developed it from there. It started doing impressions and jokes - which I did very poorly. To this day I can't tell a joke. That sounds nuts, but it's true. I exaggerate it and it becomes a joke. Everything I've ever done I've done out on the stage and it became a performance over many many years.

If you're doing stand-up, there is no fourth wall; you're engaging an audience.

My persona is most importantly just to communicate the material in a way that is most funny and meaningful in the moment. It's more like a character that's sculpted for whatever joke needs communicating at the moment.

I've got too much respect for stand-ups to call myself one.

With a play, for me, there's no time to sit back on it. You're living on your instincts. And every night there are subtle changes and adjustments, because what's in front of you is a living, breathing audience.

No one set that I ever do is the same. I mean, if I go to a comedy club, and I perform three sets, all three sets are different because anything can happen in between sets.

I'm like the master of ceremonies being funny, and then sometimes people you're with, girlfriends and stuff, are like, 'God I wish I had the person on stage to be with all the time.'

I think a theater show is a pure version of me doing my material. The theater crowd is a bit more polite, there really aren't hecklers, and there are a lot of people there to see me, and they're excited about the jokes and hanging out with me for a show.

Richard Lewis is the master at taking a joke that he's told a million times in a row in the past year, on the road, and making it look like he's pulling it out of thin air.

My stand-up is quite good now, people say. It's just like a big conversation each time. Every gig is a rehearsal.

I wanted to be a comedian.

A lot of my best stuff is just ad libs on stage, and that's one thing that I've gotten back to at the live show.

The ability to workshop in stand-up comedy is incomparable to any art form, in my opinion.

When I do stand-up, I'm basically doing a one-man show.

Stand-up will always come first. I've been doing it for 22 years, and nothing compares to that connection you have with the audience. It's euphoric.

Stand-up is different from television. In stand-up, you've got to be in control.