Kevin Nealon Quotes

Bad improv happens with people who are inexperienced with each other and don't know the craft that well. But bad stand-up is something that could happen to someone at any level in their career.

I could never do stand-up because it's that thing of having to get up on stage. And out of every 10 jokes you tell, nine of them have to get a really good response.

The only way to stay sharp is to do live shows. There is no part-time comedy.

Impressions are still kind of hard for me and not what I love to do the most, but with characters, I think there's an element of fearlessness. You try to figure out the best reading and wording of the jokes before the show, and then you just really have to go hard.

Stand-up comedy is something that you have to strive to do, multiple times a night, every night, to be good.

I feel like every time I go out, I want to do a good job. I want people to say that he's just as good at stand-up as he is in some of the movies I've seen him in, so I try to do the best every time I go out there.

When you're a stand-up, you play in front of 600 people, and it's all about timing. I could never do stand-up comedy; it would be way too hard for me.

At this point, I feel fairly comfortable in terms of performance. I think having a sketch background actually helps a lot. Because my background is acting, and stand-up, in a lot of ways, is acting.

The more you work in this business as a comedian, the closer you get to just being yourself onstage, on camera, the more well received you are.

I always try to improve my stand-up game, it's very important for me.

Open mics are a great way to rework your material to see what punchlines land best.

Stand-up, for me, is really more of an addiction, so you have to feed the beast whenever you can.

I never want to cannibalize my act, and I'm really excited that I am going to be able to perform new material. I'm not a huge fan of repeating jokes, and I don't really do any of my old material from old stand-up acts.

You have to do stand-up quite a long time before you learn how to do it well. It was probably years before I was confident enough in stand-up that I was able to talk about the things I wanted to talk about, the way I wanted to talk about them.

You have to do stand-up quite a long time before you learn how to do it well.

TV is easier: it's all planned out for you and the audience is there to see a show and they are all pumped up but when you are in a comedy club, you have to be really funny to win them over.

If you're a comic, you don't have a rehearsal room; you rehearse on stage. My main concern is remembering everything. I've written lots of material, but how do you memorise 90 minutes? That's one hell of a long speech. I've always had problems with that.

My stand-up is quite good now, people say. It's just like a big conversation each time. Every gig is a rehearsal.

Beyond any role that I ever had, really early on as a stand-up, I would see actors decide to try it and they would bomb miserably. What I realized was that stand-up, acting and writing are all their own disciplines.

Stand-up keeps you alive. It is definitely the most specialized field in comedy because you need to stay sharp and well-tuned every night.

I'm a frustrated stand-up comic. If you hand me a microphone and I get one laugh, then I'll go on for 20 minutes.

The basic function of a comic is stand-up because it's so straightforward and simple. If the audience don't laugh, you didn't do your job. I've had some audiences where I didn't care if they laughed or not because they were either too drunk or stupid.

There's no real preparing at home for stand-up. You just go and you just do it.

It's almost like, when someone plays poker for the first time, they might be a professional poker player out of ignorance, just accidentally winning. That was how it felt in my first stand-up appearance.

I have to visualise my jokes, live my jokes, feel the audience because every audience is different. It's like having a different dancing partner every night.