Maz Jobrani Quotes

If you are doing stand-up comedy, you have to be confident in what you are doing. That doesn't mean just because you are confident you are funny.

When you are doing stand-up comedy, you are the writer, producer, director, sometimes bouncer.

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.

Well, I think my stand-up is often kind of visual. Not like Carrot Top visual, but visual.

Stand up is really fun because if I think of a joke or a funny idea, then I can just go and tell some people and if they laugh, they laugh right away.

Richard Lewis is the master at taking a joke that he's told a million times in a row in the past year, on the road, and making it look like he's pulling it out of thin air.

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

The really good stand up comedians can be angry but relatable, and they have interestingly humanizing personalities. Their observational skills are far greater than mine, so I'll just stick to reading lines off a page.

Stand-up is hard.

If you have the right voice and the right delivery, you're cocky enough, and you pound down on the punch line, you can say anything and make people laugh maybe three times before they realize you're not telling jokes.

The success of any stand-up act comes out of life experience.

If I think something's funny, I try to mold it into a joke as soon as possible. Once I have a joke, I say it a million different ways on stage until I find a rhythm and it feels like it's as good as it can be.

As a comedian, you have everything working against you.

I'll never stop doing stand-up. There's nothing better than getting in front of 2,500 people and making an entire room laugh.

I'm not a natural comic, I don't think. That's why I gave up stand-up. It was hard. It involved a lot of death. Dying. Dying on stage. But it's one of those jobs you can only learn by doing it.

The hardest part of comedy is writing the jokes, and the second-hardest part is telling the jokes. To me, everything else is significantly easier.

To be honest, I wasn't the best stand-up comic.

As a comic, you try something and if it works you go with it and grind it to death.

I'm really good at standup. I always win at standup.

When you're doing stand-up, you can comment if something fails, get a laugh from that.

What's great about stand-up is that you can say whatever you want and go around the country, and sometimes the world, and work on it and see how people react. You don't need Standards & Practices or notes from lawyers or producers to tell you what's funny.

When you're doing stand-up, you want to stand onstage and, to the extent that you can, uncomplicatedly entertain.

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.

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

Actually, I think I'm funnier off-camera.