Comedic Performance Quotes

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

I've always liked Bernie Sanders. I've always wanted to do a Bernie Sanders impression, but I didn't believe people were familiar enough with him to pull it off. And I've gone down the rabbit hole of doing impressions that not everybody gets. It's not fun.

Around year seven or eight, you'd kill yourself when you realized Norm had to enter and you had to come up with a new beer joke.

The problem with comedy audiences - it's like the Coliseum - when they see someone struggling, they don't feel altruistic towards them. They feel slightly repulsed by it.

Becoming a comedienne was my way of adjusting to puberty.

Estelle Getty used the language of a truck driver, or a sailor. Bea Arthur didn't wear shoes. Bea Arthur was a comic genius. Her timing was extraordinary.

People used to think I was just a shouty comic but I was doing stuff about Sartre.

I would never quit comedy to make money. I've been doing it, like, 30 years. I still love it. That's my life.

If I had a choice, I would do comedy all the time. It's just the most challenging thing. To make someone laugh is the most challenging thing, and the most rewarding thing, in entertainment.

I have only been funny about seventy four per cent of the time. Yes I think that is right. Seventy-four per cent of the time.

I wanted to do - there was this film called 'Magic' that Anthony Hopkins did. And the director wanted me. The writer wanted me. Joe Levine said no, I don't want any comedians in this.

Comedy is a funny thing, and it's really not like any other art form in that it's very specialized and varied in it's content, but generic in it's title. You would never go to a club just to see "Live music," you would go to a jazz club to see jazz, a blues club to see blues, etc. But when you go to see "standup comedy," if you don't know the performers material, you really don't have any idea what you're gonna get.

I was a very weird child. I was very shy, so in school I would just mimic stand-up sets of Whoopi Goldberg.

It doesn't matter if it's a drama or a comedy, the need to get the emotion and the character arc across is way harder in something like this so was more of a preparation.

I snootily say I can't take too many dramatic parts, as it's taking work from actors who aren't funny.

I like the purity of stand-up because it is all about whether people laugh at your jokes. Either they laugh or they don't.

I want to let my fans know I love them and I'm coming your way and I'm bringing truckloads of funny.

I'm still fighting really hard to get any role I get. If it's comedy, I go for the laughs. And if it's drama, I try to tell the truth, and try to play the real stakes of whatever scenario the character's in.

When Logo offered me my own comedy special, I said, 'Let's make it a double.'

You can't really do comedy if you're working with Ryan Reynolds, eh? He outplays everyone in that field, so I couldn't really 'dial it down,' because he was just so much better than me at comedy.

Some of the best dramatic actors have started in comedy.

During the Great Depression, when people laughed their worries disappeared. Audiences loved these funny men. I decided to become one.

The best of Johnny Lever's films are 'Baazigar,' 'Kareeb' and 'Love Ke Liye Kuch Bhi Karega.' I just love his work in 'Baazigar,' where he plays a servant and tries to hammer a nail on a wall and is unsuccessful.

There's tons of dudes - like David O'Doherty, Tim Key, and Alex Horne - I made a lot of friends with people who are really incredible comics.

We're not all Jon Stewart. I know I'm not. I dropped out of college. Why would you come to me for anything that may influence your fact-based perspective? I think that the job of a comic is to be emotionally true.