Michael Mosley Quotes

Anybody with a sharp brain and a mic can become a comedian, but there's a need to move beyond it. The audience wants to witness the marriage of theatre, comedy and something more.

I kind of thought that stand-up comedy would suffer from the Internet because people seem to know more about the craft of stand-up than ever before. I thought it would seem trite. Kind of like if you know more about magicians, you wouldn't love them.

I never really saw myself as a standup comedian. I always just thought of myself as someone who used the eight minutes or 10 minutes she was allotted and had a blast.

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

I never predicted that I'd be a comedian, but it was something that came so naturally to me. I just felt good doing it.

Lewis Black taught me stand-up.

Stand-up comedy is an art form and it dies unless you expand it.

When I was doing ensemble theater and comedy work, I felt I had some talents. But when I started doing my shows in Berkeley and found that I could be funny on my own, I was shocked.

We still have that same burn, to get that same kind of laughs. So whether the studio wants us to or not, we're going to do it. The money is just a byproduct of coming out with good stuff. Our whole thing is building that rapport with the audience.

If I want to be a real comedian, I can't let you dictate my material, so I started creating more new material.

I'm dirty, I'm irreverent - but I'm still a very topical comedian.

That is what I got into comedy for, to be able to challenge myself and just grow as a comedian and find new ways to be funny.

Feeling supported when you are doing comedy is the best way to make comedy - at least, that's how I think.

But with 'Newsrevue' I started doing some characters, and I just loved how you were in control. You could write something that day and go and do it that night, rather than waiting for a job that involves other people. So I did character stand-up, and then proper stand-up, and I loved it; I got addicted.

I started pursuing stand-up comedy in 12th grade.

Even writing a script which will be funny is not easy. To make the script come to life and make the audience laugh, I will call myself more of an actor if I am able to do that.

If you start adapting to audiences, you're really second-guessing the situation, and it becomes a bit more like cabaret.

In order to be the best comic, you have to perform in a wide diversity of rooms.

I did a standup show called 'Show Me the Funny,' so from that I got some TV stuff and people would book me for gigs. I wasn't really good enough at that point, so had to catch up with expectations.

I love to do the stream-of-consciousness thing, because it's exciting for me, and I like to think it's exciting for the audience, too.

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.

Writing and telling jokes is my favorite thing to do, and I want to be able to do that forever.

I think you develop strong instincts when you're a comedian. You have to pay your bills by making people laugh every six seconds... or not. I had to do that for 22 years.

People who have heard of me have heard of me mostly through presenting and asked, 'Why have you gone into comedy?'

It took me a good eight to ten years to really formulate what I was doing onstage and start to get really personal with comedy. I always really had timing naturally, it was just about trying to figure out how that timing was going to work onstage.