Comedic Risk Quotes

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.

I enjoy making people laugh, but what I find funny and put online, others might misconstrue and find jerkish.

Doing drama is, in a sense, easier. In doing comedy, if you don't get that laugh, there's something wrong.

When a humorist ventures upon the grave concerns of life he must do his job better than another man or he works harm to his cause.

I never approach comedy thinking 'I know it all.' Comedy is tough. To make people laugh is not easy.

With silly stuff, it's seventy-five percent confidence. I always tell people that it's because I'm nervous about getting that next laugh and I need to hear it. I always want to condense a joke.

Cheers was one of the first shows where I paid attention to the writers because their [work] was better than everything else I was watching. The writers weren't afraid to let a joke fall slightly flat if it advanced the characters.

Stand-up comedy is tough right now. Anybody can come to a concert, tape you, and put you up on the Internet. You either fight it or embrace it.

Comedy scares me a lot. I feel like it's way harder than drama. I think my safety net is definitely drama, and I would love to kind of be able to be able to push into the comedy world and do something kind of like a Christopher Guest kind of style show. That, to me, is my kind of comedy. Like, Ricky Gervais comedy. That's my kind of thing.

If you like a conversational style of comedy, if you like comedy that's a little dangerous, I'm your guy.

Jack Benny was, without a doubt, the bravest comedian I have ever seen work. He wasn't afraid of silence. He would take as long as it took to tell the story.

Writing your own jokes, you just kind of keep working on something until you think it might work, and then you try it out and hope for the best.

When you go out there to do comedy, you feel like you're doing battle with the audience a lot of the time. You're either going to get 'em, or you're not.

I can never tell when something is funny. I just have to do it onstage and find out.

You can't expect everyone to laugh or applaud you for doing edgy things. Sometimes you'll miss. But I think comedians are artists and there's a value in failure. It kind of works both ways between comedians and audiences. The audience has to understand that comedians are going to sometimes tell a joke that doesn't work out with dark subjects, and the comedian has to understand that sometimes they 'll fail and it's not the audience's fault for not getting it or loving it.

For me, comedy literally is way more terrifying than doing drama, so it's always about stretching what I think I can do and putting myself out there in different context.

I would love to be the John Belushi of drag. He was fearless.

I am much more likely to care about someone trying to be funny and give them some credit for whatever he or she did that was remotely funny than I am to be mused by somebody declaring this isn't funny, that isn't funny, this sucks. If you want to write humor, you're going to have to get used to that.

Usually, if I think something is really funny, I'm not gonna test it. I'll just test it when I'm onstage.

There's something so scary about trying out new material and being completely comfortable jumping into the abyss with a comedic idea.

To me, being brave is an element that is so important with stand-up comedy. It's not essential. There are many comics who were just funny, and that's fine, too. But that's never been what I was trying to do in comedy. I was always trying to do something that involved not pandering to the audience.

The way I toe the line with comedy is I run jokes past people.

I'm always going to do whatever I think is funniest. If something's dark, I'll do it. If it's a sock puppet, if it's a stool, I'll do it.

It's grueling never knowing if the audience is going to think you're funny. It's soul-destroying when they don't laugh.

Comedy is such a vulnerable thing. With drama, you're not trying to make someone cry. If you do, great, but that's not your goal. With comedy, you're trying to make someone laugh, so to me, it's harder because you are in such a vulnerable position. You're like, 'I hope people like this. I hope I do the joke justice.'