Jen Kirkman Quotes

'Saturday Night Live' will always be this amazing, powerful behemoth, but it's also not the only thing happening in comedy anymore.

I started out splitting my time between the Kansas City and St. Louis comedy scenes, which both had bluer sensibilities than other cities that I've worked.

25, 30 years ago, that meant something, they were making some money. And they were doing all sorts of comedy, screaming at the audience, basically crowd control. And then there was the whole urban comedy scene.

Improv seemed to replace stand-up, which was very big before that. Stand-up comedy was real hot in the late '80s and through the '90s.

The alternative comedy scene is actually pretty small, I guess.

I grew up loving David Letterman and Pee-wee Herman, but as far as live performance comedy, all I knew were the Jerry Seinfeld-type comedians of the world, and that's what I thought live performance comedy was all about.

It went from Bob Newhart to Flip Wilson to Bill Cosby to Richard Pryor to George Carlin to Cheech and Chong. I had all these records.

There's so many good comedians in D.C. I started hanging out with those guys. Dave Chappelle was there. Actually, Dave was too young to be in the clubs, so when his mom couldn't make it, he would ask me to pretend I was his aunt, so he could do open mike.

People ask me about my influences and I say all the comedians in the 1970s and Dave Allen was a massive influence and a very big influence on a lot of modern comics.

I know for myself, every now and again on HBO, they'll show some of the young comedian specials from the '80s and early '90s, and it's just fascinating to watch those comedians - some of whom are people that are world-famous, like Chris Rock or Judd Apatow - to see the jokes that people had, but also, the way everything looked.

I find I've always been judgmental about comedy (laughs) and it's hard to turn that off, really. But what constant exposure to live comedy does is it makes you give people a second chance.

I think I'm not uber into the comedy scene, but I love to laugh, especially in our business, where you're always front and center over an extremely, sometimes overly-critical live audience. I think it helps to laugh.

The only thing I knew in the world as a little kid was comedy. And no other kids in my school cared about it at all. There was no one to talk about it with. You know, we're in a geek culture now where comedy is so giant. I'm one of the people that, you know, works on Funny or Die. And there is just a giant culture of comedy nerds. But back then, I was alone, and I had a little confidence about it because I felt like, this is my thing, this is the only thing that only I know about.

I often say that ... I'm just involved in comedy, so I can be around it.

I think comics in New York are interested in being comics. And there're comics in L.A. who are touring comics, who are certainly more interested in stand-up, but a lot of L.A. stand-ups are really looking to do something else.

I believe it is important for comedians to know who came before them.

I am the smartest comedian in the history of the world.

I love comedy and I would write things to myself as an exercise in writing. I didn't do well for years, and I quit. I started to break down why I was afraid and started to look at people I admired, like Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Freddie Prinze, George Carlin and all.

When I was nine I spent a lot of my time reading books about the history of comedy, or listening to the Goons or Hancock, humour from previous generations.

I love comedy; I'm super passionate about it, and thank God it's super in right now to have female empowered comedies.

I think that for the most part, when I started doing comedy, it had become very commercialized.

When I started, there was no comedy community, no comedy industry; there were comedians.

In the '90s, comedy was at a very low point, but these days, you've got people like Hannibal Burress, Ron Funches, Maria Bamford - people who can play any club, anywhere.

When I hit the scene, there was Billy Connolly and Max Boyce. It was all mother-in-law and Irish jokes, and we broke the mould. Now there are thousands of comedians out there, and I don't think I can be above it all.

I'd done an Edinburgh show before, in 1981, called 'The Importance of Being Varnished' - I was in the pun trade at the time.