Tommy Lee Jones Quotes

I've always thought stand-up comedians were the oral storytellers of our time, because they know rhetoric, they know delivery, they know timing, they know all of these things that you can only learn by telling a story out loud and interacting with an audience.

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.

You can't make people laugh for more than half an hour and be consistent.

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

A joke is a way to say, 'I'm going to do something funny now. If I don't get a laugh at the end, I'm a failure.'

To be really great, you need to be naturally funny in order to stand out. But you can work at it, and find the best vehicle that you have to communicate what you're saying to people.

I know what's funny, and I probably know the best way to deliver the joke. Whether it's walking out of a room, facing that way, facing this way. I just have a sense of that.

You'd better get your laugh while you're making your point, or you won't be doing it very long.

You don't need to be stable to be a stand-up comedian.

The jokes are great but what really matters for a comedian is his performance, his whole attitude, and the laughs that he gets between the jokes rather than on top of the jokes.

To do comedy, you have to be a pretty good actor to start with.

Comedy requires a lot of energy.

I started by doing a little funny story, and then I started going to open mics. I realized I had a lot of work to do - you have to get over the stage fright and get your stage presence up. It took me some time, but I finally feel that I'm at a point where I feel comfortable on stage and giving my point of view.

A lot of people think that comedy is sort of a cop out to not wrestling seriously, but I actually would argue that comedy is much more difficult than wrestling seriously because you have to be creative in almost everything that you do if you want the comedy to make sense within the realms of pro wrestling.

I need to keep my ad-libbing skills honed and make sure I'm able to banter with people and treat topics a bit more light-heartedly. But as a stand-up, first and foremost, my job is to make sure that I can write the routine that hopefully people will talk about when something big happens.

One joke coming from one person can land completely flat, while somebody else delivering it in a unique way can really elevate it.

You gotta have fun with a song, make somebody laugh. You gotta have character. A hard punchline can make you laugh, but you gotta know how to say it.

When you are doing comedy, you need to get the right reaction from your partner.

Acting and singing are actually very similar because they're both telling a story.

Whether you do stand-up comedy or write a story, you have a duty to deliver. As a comedian, you walk out on stage, and you have a minute to hook them, or they'll start booing. As a writer, it's very similar. A reader doesn't have time to say, 'I'll give him 50 pages, as it's not very good yet, but I hope it'll get better.'

The point of acting is to pretend you're someone else and sell a story.

For comedy, timing is key.

To be a comedian, you gotta jokesmith, there's no way around it.

The mistake that people make in stand-up is thinking they're profound or they're deep when there are so many people who have more worthwhile ways of phrasing things.

The only thing we are as actors are messengers. That's all we are. Correct? We are delivering the playwright's intention through the concept of the director. And I come on stage; if I feel confident in the role, then I give it away.