Comedian's Life Quotes

At some point I stopped stand-up because I didn't have something to say on a nightly basis.

I think people have a misconception about comedians and performers. All that stuff is serious business.

It's very rare that stand-up comics have kids, because once they do, they stop doing stand-up.

Stand-up is still my job. That is the thing I wanted to get into when I was 21. You cannot beat the immediacy of it, making people laugh without any interruptions or edits.

Ex-girlfriends will find themselves in my new routine. Sometimes they like that, and sometimes they definitely do not. But comedians should come with a giant warning or disclaimer: IF YOU DATE ME, IT WILL BE IN MY ACT.

Occasionally, a finger comes up to wipe a tear [of laughter] from the eye... and that's my reward... the rest goes to the government.

I still like doing stand-up now, but it's not the same. It used to be that I was out there with five other comedians. Now I usually just do it alone.

I really don't work a whole lot as far as touring, but I do stand-up every night of my life, no matter where I am.

When you do late-night TV, you do different jokes in the same place every night. When you're on the road as a comedian, you do the same jokes in a different place every night.

Comedians are never really on vacation because you're always at attention... that antenna is always out there.

I always say about my daughters, they save me from my miserable self. They take me out, you know, a comedian, you could live in your head a lot. And you're writing and you're doubting. But when I'm with my kids and my family, it's all about them.

The biggest piece of advice that I give young comedians is: If it's your goal to get where I'm at, go do something else. Because you'll never get here. Never. The odds are so bad. Because not only do you have to be a really, really strong comedian but you also have to be lucky. And most people don't get that combination.

You have to be delusional to be a comedian.

I have the comedian's fear of bottles flying. I've never been bottled off, but I have had things thrown at me. Bag of crisps. And there's still a part of me, when I sit in an audience, that thinks people are going to start heckling the play.

I've been on 'Jay Leno,' and everyone likes Jay, but being on that show is a really boring afternoon. I sincerely like Jay, but I wouldn't want his job, because I'd have to interview Kathy Ireland, and there's nothing there I'd want to know.

The sidekick business has been good to me.

With the first episode [of John Mulaney Show] I tell a story that happened to me accidentally chasing a woman down the subway.

I was being laughed at. I hated it, so I made an adjustment to control the situation. All comics learn that.

Just from my own experience, a lot of the comedians I used to work with were miserable in their actual lives. I think you need to be able to see a lot of negative in things in order to extract material, so there's probably something to that. A lot of the people I used to work with were very, very, very unfunny offstage, so that's a pretty common thing.

Standup really is a young man's game, a single young man's game. Even when I was younger, when I wasn't single, it was hard to be on the road because you go through relationships because your girlfriend kinda got tired of you being gone.

I had no desire to get up onstage and tell jokes. I prefer to stand next to really funny people.

From 1936 on, I have taken more falls than any other 20 comedians put together. From the time I was 21, I've taken them on everything from clay courts to cement to wood floors, coming off pianos, going out a two-story window, landing on Dean, falling into the rough. You do that and you're gonna have problems.

I didn't become a comedian to work this hard.

I feel lucky that I can have people laugh solidly for a whole hour by just saying what I think and getting paid for it.

I can't imagine saying the same joke for three hours. I don't know how that would work.