Comedic Material Quotes

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

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

After 'Wedding Crashers' I was just surprised as to the lack of comedic female material there is. So I had to start working and getting stuff out there for myself.

Writing books isn't a drastic departure from writing for the stage. I've always written in the long format, five, eight, 10-minute pieces rather than one-liners, so since writing books, the process hasn't changed much. A piece in my live routine can end up as part of one of my HBO specials, and it can also end up in one of the books.

I think both of those: the subject matter, pop culture... the talent, I don't think... there's no Jim Belushi in Saturday Night Live, for me. And probably, you know, possibly the material. They've done everything over the years.

Writing jokes for others is like having babies for someone else. It's sad. Like the woman who gives up her baby but needs to be close so she secretly becomes the maid in the household.

I keep getting these people at my shows who only know me from television. I can always tell when they're, like, emotionally flinching when I start doing my jokes.

I went to Montreal. My first gig went very badly. They just weren't laughing at anything. I found out they were a load of Christians, and it was a gig to raise money for a new church roof.

I've had plenty of friends tell me that their first time doing stand-up, they do well, and then they tank for a while after that. Kind of like the first time you do a drug, you're like, "Huh! This is pretty darn good," and then you spend all your money trying to get the same high.

The mother-in-laws themselves weren't natural jokes but most comedians used to use that.

With stand-up you've just got that one chance. Audiences can be quite fickle.

If I'm gonna stay in this world of comedy, then it has to be a really special character to me in a really smart piece of material.

Most of the note-taking happens while I'm watching television. It's a broad window on the world, and a lot of things are already established in my mind as things I say, things that I'm interested in, things that are fodder for my [stand-up] machine. And when I see something that relates to one of them, I know it instantly and if it's a further exaggeration and a further addition, or an exception - if it plays into furthering my purpose, I jot it down.

Doing comedy is as easy as doing anything else. You're dependent totally on the material.

I'm a big eater. I mean, a lot of my stand-up is about food, and you write about what you know, and that's the only thing I know. I don't know anything else.

As a comedian, Trump is comedy gold, and he almost makes my job too easy... the stuff that comes out of his mouth is a precious commodity.

My background is part of my comedy. Your experiences are where the jokes come from.

I tend to have a lot of jokes about ex-girlfriends. They always ask me if they will be the subject of a joke, and I always tell them they won't. Unless they do something crazy. They all tend to, so you know where that goes. There are no closed doors. The 'art' will suffer.

I wish, in some ways, I was the type of comedian who could do something blistering and topical, but I'm the guy who gets stuck in the revolving door and thinks I should write about that.

I am a wild orchid of comedy, so I can only do well under specific conditions... There are people who I think can do any room, and do stadiums and thousand-seat theaters, and then there are people like me who just perform for my parents.

There's a bit of hazing when it comes to the youth performers and a disbelief that you're capable of handling dramatic or comedic material on an adult level.

I did my first set at a talent show, and I couldn't finish because the judges didn't like my jokes. They were 'offensive.'

Every comedian is just doing the comedy they find funny. This is me and it's not clean in any way. I could get a lot more work on TV playing clean but it's never interesting.