Andy Kindler Quotes

I'm pretty good at getting over people throwing stuff at me. If you've been doing stand up long enough you know how to swing back and get the laughs.

Most of my comedy writing happens through improvisation on stage; doing it in the moment. Going up with an idea and fleshing it out over time on stage and in front of people until it becomes a full bit.

Back in the old Corp, we weren't training those privates to infiltrate into the peacetime Marine Corp. We were training those privates to go to Vietnam.

When I started stand-up, the first thing I did was to take an improv class.

I took an improv class in 2005 in Chicago at ComedySportz, which was short-form, more of a games-based improv. I remember it being real fun and helping with my stand-up. If I did an improv class, and then I did stand-up later, I felt looser on stage and more comfortable.

Comedy is something that I'm definitely looking to get into. I had a little taste of it and I do intend on going to classes for it because I think it's a different muscle, and it's hard to find female comedians.

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

I don't have any type of sketch-comedy or stand-up background.

When I began doing stand-up, it took me a long time to get an hour's worth of material together.

The Second City

I always tell comics you got to hang with your stand-up.

For the first actual comedy-comedy I did, I took a comedy class in New York, which was full of slightly unhinged people. It was a pretty depressing crowd, very angry and strange people. But then I took a class at the Upright Citizens Brigade, and I loved those people.

I don't like the pressure to try to tell the best jokes. I'm not good at jokes.

I thought of Second City as just the greatest therapeutic job anybody could ever dream of having.

If I'm not in the theatre, I'm in an open mic night or doing a guest set at the Comedy Club, or whatever, just trying to develop stuff.

There are many problems with being a comedian: the travel, the late nights, the pressure, the fear of running out of funny things to say.

I started comedy in 2006. I didn't even think it was a thing I could do.

If you pay attention, stand-up can be great improv training ground. But one of the things that helped me the most was doing warm-up for the 'Mr. Show' tapings way back when.

When I was starting out, I was just bringing a garbage bag of jokes onstage, pulling them out like, 'What about this? No? Alright.' I was just trying to be funny about anything.

I was always just like, 'Standups are making it up.' A lot of people have that myth about standup. And so it wasn't until I was in college for theater school in Boston that I realized I can actually start going to open mics and figuring this out.

When I started out in stand-up, I was already used to speaking in front of people, how to project, control my voice - a lot of learning curves I had overcome.

One percent of all comics ever reach the level of a Chris Rock or a Jerry Seinfeld. When audiences come to the underground rooms, they have a chance to watch the process that happens along the way - and see the comedians grow.

I always think stand-up is the most brutal environment for a comedian.

I never do a whole new set of new material. I do one new joke at a time, and I wedge it in between two good jokes. Or if it's a long story, I don't do it in L.A. or New York; I do it in Kansas and Omaha, all these places I'm going this weekend.

I graduated boot camp with meritorious promotion.