Comedian Struggles Quotes

Comedians are the nearest to suicide.

I'm a comedian, which is the opposite of a lifestyle that equips you to be a parent.

I used to tell people I was a comic and they'd be fascinated. Now all you get is: 'Oh yeah, my cousin Steve's a comic.'

For many comedians, two common anxiety triggers include performing in front of family members and doing brand new material.

There seems to be a weird ceiling to being a stand-up as far as acting.

Like most comedians, I have crippling low self-esteem, so I always think that what I've just done is rubbish.

It's painful for me to watch someone who isn't funny. It's horrifying to sit in the back and watch some guy who just totally sucks.

As a comedian, you have everything working against you.

I remember thinking as I was doing the jokes for the first time, "If I can hear that very clearly, I'm not hearing laughter." It just became deafening, this buzzing noise. I mean, it was brutal. It was really terrible. Then I remember thinking, "At least nobody important, or anyone who I really respect, saw that." And then literally right when I went off the stage, Jerry Seinfeld got up and went on. So I was like, "Oh great. Seinfeld saw me bomb." On the other hand, I thought, "At least no one will be thinking of me anymore. They'll just be focusing on him."

I've never been able to tell jokes. In the beginning of my career I did impressions and jokes like any other comedian, but I was never very successful because I did it poorly. So I started to talk to the audience and started talking about the atmosphere around me and started to become angry, not in a mean-spirited way, but in a fun way - and my attitude developed from there.

I had some jokes that were dirty. And some of it is when I started making appearances on Conan and Letterman back in the late '90s, I think. You had to remove the curse words, or you couldn't do some of the more explicit jokes.

When I came into comedy in 2005, I didn't even know there was discrimination against musical comics in the alternative-comedy strain.

The toughest thing for me is doing on-camera stuff as a comedian.

The toughest nights when I was a young, unknown comedian were opening for these real old-time Italian singers. I'm like Grace Jones to them. "This guy is nuts-talking about socks. Where's the wife jokes, where's the fat jokes?"

There isn't a comedian in the world that hasn't bombed.

As a largely unsuccessful comedian, I've become someone that younger people sometimes find and ask for advice, which I'm happy to give, even though it makes me feel old.

There are few lonelier sights than a good comedian being funny in a movie that doesn't know what funny is.

I never get to be funny on T.V.

I always wondered, like, you know how you go to the family barbecue, and your uncle is that funny guy that you laugh at because he's family? That's how I felt with 'Fighter and the Kid.' People would laugh at my stuff, but it was always tough for me to tell. I just needed to see if there was something going on.

Being a comedian, it's hard. People hear 'YouTuber,' and they automatically think, 'a social warrior,' and you have to stand up for all these things.

The worst thing that can happen to a comedian is to do a documentary on your life and you're watching it with an audience and there's not a laugh.

There is nothing quite as loud as the silence of an audience when a comedian is on stage.

I used to have a theory actually that, if you've had a good childhood, a good marriage and a little bit of money in the bank, you're going to make a lousy comedian.

I've loved the Internet space in terms of creative content control and ownership, the things I haven't had since I started as a stand-up comedian.

I was very dirty; I was a very dirty comic. There was no way I would have gotten on TV with the act I had when I first started.