Jay Mohr Quotes

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.

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.

Stand-up comedy is a sickness. Who wouldn't want a room full of people laughing and screaming at you just because of who you are? Nothing is as good, except maybe having a baby.

There's an audience that is paid to laugh at my jokes. I'm playing a character while I'm doing stand-up. Real stand-ups, man, they're playing themselves. I'd be far too terrified.

If in the first 30 seconds, a comedian cannot bring a smile to your face, he is not an entertainer.

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.

As a guy comedian, your special is probably the closest thing to the excitement of a wedding day. It's your first one, and you want it to be perfect, and you want it to mean something. You want it to look good.

You gotta have the balls to go out there and be funny, man.

I've got too much respect for stand-ups to call myself one.

I really don't work a whole lot as far as touring, but I do stand-up every night of my life, no matter where I am.

I've been a comedian since I was fourteen. But I've never really been a CEO.

I guess I still feel that I'm a comedian; if I had to pick one thing that I feel like I could do, it would be that. That doesn't mean that I like it, but I feel that's what I am.

When you see a comedian on stage, the best comedians make it feel like a conversation. But it's not. We have very little interest in what an audience has to say during a performance. Being a stand-up comedian, you're an egomaniac to some degree. Everyone wants to hear what you have to say, apparently. That's not how real relationships work.

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

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.

I might've been witty, but I didn't have a shtick. So, I never considered myself a comedian.

Comedy is an amazing calling. Once you get that first laugh, it's hard to turn away. Then, of course, you're hooked and you have to learn how to survive in the business.

A special validates you as a stand-up by documenting your material.

Once I started doing stand-up, everything fell into place. That was when I started acting more; I felt like I'd found my place in the business.

All I have is my performance, I try to feed in the best of everything that I could possibly do into those 90 minutes and to make a live entertainment show out of it.

It takes many years to be a great comedian.

I sometimes use a girl singer the way Henny Youngman uses his violin - as a bridge between one laugh and the next.

People who want to do stand-up from the start - I mean that's an extremely self-centred thing to want, isn't it?

Stand-up was my entree into the entertainment world. I didn't have to act out somebody else's words. I could just stand there with a microphone, and nobody would interrupt me. It's the most narcissistic thing you could probably do.

Comedians' first ten minutes usually stay with them the first several years of their career. It's their mission statement. Their disclaimer that lets people know who they are. Or were. It's also a good time to make fun of your name if you have a funny or strange one.