Bo Burnham Quotes

The misconception is that standup comics are always on. I don't know any really funny comics that are annoying and constantly trying to be funny all the time.

Mama is my chance to be a stand-up comedian. In my mind, it's my chance to be Chris Rock.

Everyone knows the feeling where you're in the pub and you make your mates laugh. It's awesome, you feel like you rock. That's what comedians want with a bit of extra ego.

I like the purity of stand-up because it is all about whether people laugh at your jokes. Either they laugh or they don't.

it is hard to find new jokes. What I need is new audiences.

I'd rather try and cram in another two gags than leave a pause to say, 'Hey, wasn't that bit funny?'

I feel that I'm a stand-up comedian more than anything else, that's my job.

Here's the thing, with comedy - and I learned this from Will Ferrell - you can't be ashamed. If you're doing comedy, you have to fully commit to the joke. Shame is not part of it. If you act shy or uncomfortable about your body, that makes the audience shy and uncomfortable. And in a comedy you just want them to loosen up and laugh.

Why would they have gone to the trouble to hire the best comedy writers in the business to write funny material for us to play straight, if the children in our audience were the only audience.

In comedy, though, it's good to get feedback from the audience about what they find funny.

I loved Omar Vizquel. He tells some really long jokes, and he has his own way of telling them, but he can make every joke very funny. He would always come up with jokes on the loudspeaker on the bus.

I think comedy is one of the hardest things to pull off. You either have timing or you don't, and that's something I don't have for sure.

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

I wanted to be a comedian.

I don't think of myself as funny - I don't fill up a room with my humor... I would fail miserably as a stand-up comedian.

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.'

If you're a comedian, you are looking for material in daily life.

It seems like when I first started, people got into comedy because they wanted to be good comedians.

Doing stand-up takes the fun out of being funny.

Before doing my first open mic, I was sitting in the back watching all these comedians banter back and forth and fire jokes and up each other, and I thought, 'This is where I wanna be.'

I don't like comedians who don't have conviction, and with stand-up, it is always best to have an angle.

I took a stand-up comedy class because I'd always wanted to.

When they first start doing comedy, new comics or even people that have only been doing it three or four years, they're doing an impersonation of a stand-up. This is what I think a stand-up should sound like.

You know, I liken it to - when you write a joke for somebody else, it's like you - you know, like the Wile E. Coyote dynamite plunger, where he pushes the plunger down and then you see the fuse go then there's an explosion in the distance? That's like writing a joke for somebody. When you tell the joke, you're in the explosion.

Steven Wright can do Steven Wright very well. Not everyone can do Steven Wright's jokes with the same results.