Mitch Hedberg Quotes

I enjoy stand-up because it has the biggest reward: instant gratification. You can hear the people laughing.

I've been doing stand-up 29 years; there is no other career when you're finding your stride 30 years into it.

I have a lot of friends who were stand-ups, and they just stopped after a while, because they didn't like that battle, or they just couldn't do it. And then they would get on a sitcom and get visible and get back into it, because the audience was just way easier on them. But they lost those crucial years of learning to turn any audience into your audience.

I always had one goal, and that was to be a real funny stand-up comic, and that's pretty much what I'm doing. And everything else is kind of like gravy - TV, movies.

When I first graduated college, I told my parents I'd try to pursue comedy for the first year or two, and if it didn't work out, I'd put my nose to the grindstone and try to find a job somehow. I went to UCB, and it clicked with me.

I'm looking to be the next comedy mogul.

You have to start at the very bottom and you've got to do every job. I did that so I could understand what everybody does. I didn't become this huge producer overnight. It took many, many years.

I'm really ambitious about is being a really good comic and doing it for the rest of my life and getting really big. Not really famous because I want fame or attention, just a little freedom. So, that's where I'm ambitious.

Sometimes I have young comics that ask me, "What should I do when I meet an agent or a manager and they ask me stuff?" And I say, "Well, they always usually ask, 'Where do you see yourself in five years, 10 years, 15 years?' And it's good to have an answer for that."

The worst years of my life were the first two years I was doing standup. You're learning how to do, and you're going on stage in front of two drunks and people aren't laughing and you're broke. That's a really hard time in your life.

I just always loved comedy and I really wanted to be good at it. And it was heartbreaking, 'cause I started and I wasn't good at it. I was only 17-years-old, so I had a lot to learn about life in general. But I just kept on trying. I was young enough and stupid enough and I had no other choice. I had nothing else I was good at.

One of the lessons I learned in all those years practicing karate is that progress only comes in small incremental portions.

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 just loved comedy as a kid and I think at some point, it just occurred to me that you could try it, and I did.

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 got into comedy because I wanted to get into writing.

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

At some point you realize, I have dreams. I would love to be working on wonderful roles, in wonderful films, with people I respect and admire. And that will come in its time. In the meantime, "Pay attention to your work. Get better at what you do." That's my job.

When I went into Bobby's World, I had no idea it would be a success. I had been doing the Bobby voice as part of my nightclub adult act for years.

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.

These days, I find I'm applying a little more patience to my process. If I look back on my work, I can see those songs I bailed on could have been better, that had those great two verses and then I kind of coasted from there. These days, if a song is giving me trouble, I put it aside and pick it up later, and keep doing that, for a year if I have to, until it takes shape.

Stand-up is not something that you're good at right away. You have to do it a ton. But, I think I got to shave a year off because I didn't have to get over stage fright.

The main reason for people's lack of success is their willingness to give up what they want most of all, for what they want right now!

I never had the confidence to say I was going to be in front of the camera as a comedian until I saw Eddie Murphy years later.

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