Comedic Delivery Quotes

I don't mind a crowd's not laughing; it's the groans that slow down the show.

Most comedians are borderline psychotic. It's what makes their work interesting.

When you do an hour and a half and you destroy, like tonight was great. I had an awesome time. I realized that I'd been up there for about an hour and a half and I realized, "Wow, I'm gonna get out of here without doing Walken." It is a bit of a moral victory.

Every time I wrote a sketch that was in my voice, Ferrell would just do it better.

You gotta have the balls to go out there and be funny, man.

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.

When I used to watch vaudevillian impressionists, people like Rich Little or Frank Gorshin, I always felt like the voice was the only point. I didn't want to do that. I wanted to be of the Robin Williams or Jonathan Winters model, where observation and storytelling was important.

Chris Rock does the political thing really well, but that never worked for me.

It's weird because standup can be like therapy. Comedians can't be satisfied with just having fun with our friends. We've got to figure out a way to do it on stage.

The real challenge in acting is in comedy. It's easier to get that gasp in a drama. Not easy, because you still have to find that emotional pitch. And when you do something in drama and you hear that sob from the audience it's so fulfilling. But as a comic actor, when the laugh is supposed to come and you punch in that line and nothing happens it is dreadful. It's horrific and you feel like dying right there.

The audience is so important. Because there's something that I might think is super funny, but if it's just not getting the feedback, I have to let it go.

Having to stand in front of an audience and have it be your job to make them laugh, you can't really look to anyone but yourself. It's what you wrote, what you said and how you said it, so it's kind of terrifying, but I liked it. When it goes well, it's the best feeling in the world. When it doesn't go well, it's the worst feeling, but once you get into the rhythm of it, I think it's really fun.

I don't consider myself, you know, in real life one of those funny guys. My comedy comes through my work.

A comic says funny things. A comedian says things funny.

In comedy, you have to do all of the same stuff you do in drama and then put the comedy on top of it. You, the actor, are aware of the comedy but the character is oblivious. And you have to have a sense of humor.

The trick [in comedy] is always to figure out how real you're playing it and how real it's supposed to feel. That's a hard thing to figure out.

In the old days, if you topped the bill one evening, you'd do 22 minutes maximum, and if you overstepped and did 27 one night, you'd get a knock on the door telling you it wasn't acceptable.

What I'm doing when I'm doing my speaking engagements is that I'm delivering serious material with humor. So, instead of delivering humor without a particular point other than to entertain people, I'm delivering comedy in a serious way.

Being in a smaller environment - sometimes I like that. As a comic, we start off in comedy clubs, and there are people right at your feet, right on top of you. And I realize, as I get older, I miss that sometimes.

When you're going for a joke, you're stuck out there if it doesn't work. There's nowhere to go. You've done the drum role and the cymbal clash and you're out on the end of the plank.

I learned that you don't have to be all over the place, that you can be subtle and you can say what you say. The words that you put together can be just as hilarious as falling all over the place or doing something.

I don't make much distinction between being a stand-up comic and acting Shakespeare - in fact, unless you're a good comedian, you're never going to be able to play Hamlet properly.

And writing comedy and it really taught me how to kind of like craft jokes, it sounds like weird but really focus on crafting jokes and trying to make the writing really sharp. At the same time I did improv comedy in college, and that helped with understanding the performance aspect of comedy, you know, because it's different when you improv something vs. when you write it and they're both kind of part of my process now.

I was influenced by a lot of stand-up comedians... Eddie Murphy back when he was doing 'Raw.' I watched that so many times as a kid, I can probably still quote the entire thing to this day. Chris Rock. Dave Chappelle. George Carlin. A lot of the guys who were sort of edgy for their time.

The whole idea of comedy, there is nothing normal about going up on stage to make strangers laugh. But I'm also not an exhibitionist like other comics. I'm not up there talking about masturbating.