Comedy Craftsmanship Quotes

[Being a good comedian] is a skill, but it's also a weird thing that only certain people can do. I always equate it to surgeons and how they can just cut people open and operate. Certain people are just wired differently, and I feel like comics are the same way.

Everything in comedy's got to be exactly right, which is why making a comedic film is kind of a difficult process, because, for most of the two years of shooting it and editing it and reshooting and all of that, it's not quite right. And it's only when you just at the end, you put the final polish on it, it becomes really funny again.

For me, it's a purity thing about the joke itself. It's a test of a joke whether or not you do it completely clean and it works. If it does, then that's a legitimate item you have there. For me, it's nothing to do with finding those words offensive. It's just not what I'm in search of. Do it clean, and you are really earning that laugh.

I don't think of myself as a comedian, but as an artist, a scientist and chemist who just happens to be funny. I started doing stand-up to add another level to my game. I feel that I'm a young rookie with a veteran's skill.

It's an unknown quantity. It's actually almost a cliché to say it, how hard comedy is. What's that famous quote? "Dying is easy, comedy's hard." I think the broader it gets, if you miss by a millimetre, you've missed completely. It's a very hard thing to do.

People always talk about the content, in terms of the politics of it or whatever social issues are in it, and it's like, "Yeah, but I'm also a good comic." You could at least talk about the form of it, and I feel like that's always the thing that's missed.

Stand-up comedy in the end, unlike the rest of the entertainment industry, is a meritocracy. There's a certain level of undeniability you can work toward.

In stand-up, you do need to be having fun up there, like Richard Pryor said, but you have to know yourself well, too... You start learning, and it's like playing a piano. You know exactly what keys to stroke, 'cause really, with comedy, you're, like, fiddling with people's souls.

I'm always looking at new ways to tell a joke so that it doesn't get stale while working on new jokes every night or I would go absolutely crazy and would want to kill myself. I just want to go in there and talk about what's bugging me.