Artie Lange Quotes

I stopped doing standup because it stopped being fun. And the reason it stopped being fun was it was harder to write - and this was before the Internet - it was harder to write new stuff. It had gotten so crazy.

There's no one on the road that I tried to pattern myself after. There's no one in history that I tried to pattern myself after. Because one thing I was told that in standup you want to develop your own voice.

Young stand-ups, we ought to do comedy in George Carlin's spirit, in Richard Pryor's spirit, in Jackie Gleason's spirit, in Lucille Ball's spirit, because they did it with the spirit.

I guess the one-liner kind of comic sounds like a guy who can talk and talk and whatever the subject is, he can pull out a one-liner, but I couldn't do that. I didn't like the association. I mean, I love Steven Wright, but so many people started saying "Steven Wright" to me, and I would get mad, because I never wanted to be thought of as copying anybody.

My dream role is Richard Pryor, no question about that. I'm a big Richard Pryor fan. I've always been intrigued about the darkness behind his comedy; that would always be a dream role for me.

I loved Stephen Wright, and I loved Mitch Hedberg, but they seemed like geniuses you could never emulate. You'd just be ripping them off.

Every comic went through their Mitch Hedberg phase - the glasses, the hair in the face - and you knew immediately when they were doing it.

I listened to this interview once with Jerry Seinfeld that really influenced my comedy and all of my writing, which is that when you're starting out in comedy, it's the audience that tells you what's funny about you. And you need to listen to that and make a note of that.

I didn't know that people compared Bill Hicks and I but certainly I'm flattered if they do. I knew Bill a bit. We had dinner a couple of times and played guitar together once. I really tried to keep my distance from him professionally.

I am suspicious of writers who say their work is original and influenced by nobody. If it is, it is probably uninteresting. The biggest source of novels is other novels.

I dare say that if most comedians today, the gifted ones, were to sit down and write, they'd learn more about their craft. But what happens is they get out there before they learn what their viewpoint is, if any.

There's only one rule in stand-up, which is that you have to be funny. Yet 99 per cent of comics look and talk exactly the same.

Early on, I had a girlfriend come see me, and she was like, 'Yeah, it was good, but you were funny at a dining hall at the University of Maryland.' That's when I realized I was contrived. I was reciting jokes. So I really worked on - no matter what - sounding like I was just talking to the people.

Right around 11 or 12, when I saw Eddie Murphy's standup special 'Delirious,' and I taped it on a VHS tape - I think I watched it every single day. I lived and breathed Eddie Murphy for that whole year.

I didn't write superheroes for the first 10 years of my comic career. I was just doing fan fiction. I wasn't thinking about superheroes at all, even though I loved them. I was raised by Watchmen and Dark Knight, so I was raised in with it's all been done, they don't worry about that.

As a young girl, if you do something funny - especially if you're Jewish - someone says, 'Oh, have you seen Gilda Radner?'

Every time I wrote a sketch that was in my voice, Ferrell would just do it better.

I'm not original, but I strive toward it as much as possible. I tried really hard on Weekend Update to do something that I considered original, which was, I tried to cut all cleverness out of the joke.

When you're doing standup you're kind of doing, "Hey. I thought of this. This may be funny.

When people call something "original," 9 out of 10 times they just don't know the references or original sources involved.

David Lynch is very important to me, and he does dreamlike movies, but my dreams are not like David Lynch's dreams. I have no interest in copying anybody's work. It would never occur to me to want this to look like someone else's thing.

I listen to a lot of music. But I definitely haven't looked at an artist and like thought I want to have a song like this.

You are the equal of the idol who has given you your inspiration

The poet is he who inspires, rather than he who is inspired.

Any comedian who tells you how dark and dangerous they are, they're not dark and dangerous.