Moshe Kasher Quotes

Every comic is taught that you're supposed to have a great seven-minute set and then get a sitcom. And I don't want to get the sitcom.

I think comedy is difficult, and I'm amazed so many people want to do it. I'll be buying jeans and somebody will say, "I'm a comedian" - the guy selling you the jeans. The desire to be a comedian is weird. I found it weird myself to want to be one; I was a schoolboy when I wanted to be one but I didn't know how to do it. That was 50 years ago, so times have changed greatly. There seems to be a long line of people desperate to do it and most of them are quite good.

I think both of us [ with Steve Oram], once we decided to do comedy, knew that we would have to come to London to do that.

I really wanted to, but I just didn't understand how people became comedians. I kind of thought it was something you were born into. And so I wanted to be a veterinarian or an architect. I wanted to be in a band, and for some reason I could understand how you could be in a band because I had guitars and all my friends played music. Comedy was a secret want, but it wasn't anything I pursued.

I think with a comedian, when you get to the point of a greatest hits, it's kind of an acknowledgment that you've been doing stand-up a long time, which not very many people do.

To succeed in comedy you ultimately have to put in the hours and get lucky - The amount of people who are able to break through is so small a fraction of the amount of people trying.

I'm glad that that era of stand-up is over, because I think it adversely affected a lot of people who could have been really, really great comedians. Because they unconsciously or subconsciously stifled their wild impulses, and were thinking about the five clean minutes for The Tonight Show, or the 20-minute sitcom pitch as a stand-up act.

Not necessarily in the beginning, thinking I would have a career in comedy, but I was always interested in making people laugh.

I like to read, but otherwise I'm just your average, self-obsessed comedian. It's pretty much all I think about.

Nobody really wants to be a stand-up, they want to get on TV.

You get to a certain point, especially if you're a comedian, where people think certain things. It's like, I don't take the time to explain it to people, it's just part of what I do.

I did get good enough to get on HBO's Young Comedians Special, but I certainly wasn't the person who got launched off of HBO's Young Comedians Special. That would be Ray Romano that year. I had some semi-intelligent jokes, but when people would see me, they would think, "Oh, that's a good writer." No one would ever have said, "Oh, that's a good performer."

I still think funny, and people young and old still come and see me. That's flattering. The day comes that they stop coming, then I'll know that it's time to retire to the Jewish ranch.

Not all comedy clubs or situations are ideal, especially when you're first coming up and I think that's good for you. Eventually you get to express your real personality.

I keep doing specials because I think there are a lot of people who make movies and TV who are fans of comedy - if they start to like you, they'll get a project going and call you in.

If I could make crazy money just doing stand-up, that's what I would do.

I think that if you, as a comedian, are trying to be in people's face, then you've got to come up with new stuff every year. We're in a mass consumption phase where people take things for granted and want things to be instant when these are not things that can be instant.

I wanted to be a comedian, I wanted people to laugh at what I was saying, not to be staring at my boobs or wearing a skirt and show off my ... I just didn't think that that was the best way to get taken seriously in that world.

All of my life doing interviews, comedy has been my favorite thing, comedians are my favorite people.

So many people, my friends and family, were all saying, "You're so funny. Why don't you become a comedian or an actor?" But it wasn't a reality at the time, it wasn't a road that Latin people were accepted in.

I knew I wanted to be in comedy but the path of least resistance was doing stand-up in folk music clubs where I could get on stage. I guess you could get up no matter how bad you were and you didn't have to audition. You just got up. Everything else required an audition and if you auditioned for a TV show, you would stand in line with a hundred other people. But at the clubs, it was okay just to get up, so that's why I started in stand-up.

I always loved comedy, but it never seemed like something that I could do professionally.

I'll take anyone I can get that will pay money to see me. And if there's more of me in the world, people who think they're good people and comedians who have a good message or whatever, then that's great. If there's some kind of balance there that's good.

Women are very funny. Some of the funniest people I can think of are women.

I think everyone is given drama, by virtue of the fact that we all have drama in our lives, but not everyone can make people laugh.