Eddie Murphy Quotes

When someone says to me, do you do stand-up I say absolutely not. I like to think of it as a theatrical performance. With me the show changes maybe five to ten percent every night. Of course, whatever I see in front of me and sometimes I get on a little run about it and it changes the show. And my delivery is such that people who have seen me many times say Gee, I never heard that before. Actually, they have, but I might have changed it around.

The whole idea of comedy, there is nothing normal about going up on stage to make strangers laugh. But I'm also not an exhibitionist like other comics. I'm not up there talking about masturbating.

When you do stand-up, you're just concerned with trying to leave with some semblance of human dignity at the end of your performance.

Performing comedy, you develop a rhythm of ideas and laughs. I live for it.

That's a lovely experience when you make an audience laugh. Then the nerves go away for a bit. And sometimes you do things then that you've never done before that are really funny.

It's good to do stand-up. It kind of wakes you up and makes you feel like you're doing something. You got the crowd right there. That's all fun.

I remember doing a lot of comedy. I always loved that feeling when you do something on stage and you can feel the vibe of the audience turn, and they start laughing. It's how you know something's not right, and how to fix it, or how to make the moment stronger or funnier.

Speaking for myself, I try to go out there on the stage and make jokes with people, so I'm not really thinking about the impact anything I have. If it does resonate with people, that's really great.

Now, I think the people who are still doing stand-up are doing it because they love stand-up.

I get to do stand-up every single day. I love that live energy exchange between the audience and myself, and to get to say the things I want to say and comment on.

In comedy you feel you need to go back to the theatre every now and again, you feel you need to go back to an audience every now and again to see if you're still getting your craft right, making people laugh at the moments you think they should and that sort of thing.

When I do stand-up, I'm basically doing a one-man show.

In 27 years doing this, I've seen a handful of truly great, masterful standup sets. One was Tig Notaro last night at Largo.

Before doing stand-up, I thought acting was easy - it's not easy. It's a hard life. It's easy in its own way, you just stand there and talk. But there is a difference between people who can do it well and people who can't.

I have a very high respect for professional comedians. What they do astonishes me. You have to be really smart and absorb everything, repackage it, bring it back to the person, and make them laugh at themselves. I can make people laugh during my talks because they didn't come to have me make them laugh. It's added value. So my job is way easier than that of a professional comic.

One of the first things you ever learn as a stand-up is don't show fear.

I make people laugh hard; I'm a comic, that's just the way it is. And I make them laugh because I'm funny, not because I'm filthy. The subject matter is dirty, but the pictures I paint are really funny. A lot of comics don't understand that that's what it's about. It's just, "I'll be dirty and they'll laugh." Nobody's becoming a superstar that way.

And as a stand-up comic, that's the one thing I'm a little uncomfortable with. I'm not uncomfortable with sincerity in my regular life, but, like in terms of my product that I offer, I think that it's weird, because comics used to be way more sincere in the '80s.

It's hard to get laughs when you're new.

Stand-up is an amazing art form, I think, because it's all about you having complete control of the situation, but absolutely none.

Being onstage and performing, the high of that, and people coming to see you, and getting to make them laugh - that's what gets me hyped up. It's a nervous excitement.

I've always improvised, and stand-up was this great release. All of a sudden, it was just me and the audience.

Also I can come up with new bits - people yell stuff out and it's a new subject or a subject that I've been thinking about that I haven't done onstage yet and I'll just run with it.

To me, if you are in the same building with Peter Sellers or John Cleese, or any of those guys and holding your own making other people laugh, that's a compliment.

I remember I used to go to The Laugh Factory and just goof off onstage, and then I'd see Dane Cook. He did a bit about his Mom making the bed in the summertime when he was a kid. He just said "Vroom!" and threw the sheet up in the air and the sheet would just stay over the bed for like a minute and a half. All he had were his arms out, but I could see the sheet. And he didn't do anything. He just kept it there. And I went, "I have to write more."