Stand-Up Comedy quotes:

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I got lucky. I won the San Francisco Stand-Up Comedy Competition in 1977 while I was still at San Francisco State. -- Dana Carvey
Stand-up comedy is a raunchy profession. -- Aziz Ansari
Wrestling was like stand-up comedy for me. -- Dwayne Johnson
Stand-up comedy and poverty. Those were my two main endeavors. -- Dave Foley
Stand-up comedy is an art form and it dies unless you expand it. -- Sam Kinison
I did stand-up comedy for seventeen years. I need to explore other things. -- Dane Cook
The ability to workshop in stand-up comedy is incomparable to any art form, in my opinion. -- Mike Birbiglia
When has stand-up comedy been kind to anyone? It goes after anyone who's the target. Comedy attacks, man. -- Sam Kinison
Stand-up comedy is mine: it's my entity; it's my brand; I own it. I do it when I want to do it. -- Kevin Hart
I just liked stand-up comedy so much. I used to memorize Bill Cosby albums and other people's albums, George Carlin, Flip Wilson. -- Drew Carey
While awaiting sentencing, I decided to give stand-up comedy a shot. The judge had suggested I get my act together, and I took him seriously. -- Tim Allen
I'm a comedian, for God's sake. Viewers shouldn't trust me. And you know what? They're hip enough to know they shouldn't trust me. I'm just doing stand-up comedy. -- Dennis Miller
Stand-up comedy is the most relaxing thing I do. If I want to unwind and de-stress, I go out and do stand-up, often several shows in a night. -- Judah Friedlander
Stand-up comedy is a sickness. Who wouldn't want a room full of people laughing and screaming at you just because of who you are? Nothing is as good, except maybe having a baby. -- Howie Mandel
I keep my stand-up comedy notes in a pile on my desk. I don't organize my act. I keep myself in a state of confusion. It stresses me out, but I prefer creative chaos. -- Joy Behar
The two things I understand best are stand-up comedy and martial arts. And those things require an ultimate grasp of the truth. You have to be objective about your skills and abilities to compete in both. -- Joe Rogan
Wrestling was like stand-up comedy for me. Every night I had a live audience of 25,000 people to win over. My goal was never to be the loudest or the craziest. It was to be the most entertaining. -- Dwayne Johnson
Stand-up comedy seems like a terrifying thing. Objectively. Before anyone has done it, it seems like one of the most frightening things you could conceive, and there's just no shortcut - you just have to do it. -- John Oliver
Stand-up comedy and comedy in general is the ultimate form of free speech, because you get to poke holes in all the pretentious bubbles politicians and pundits and popes and pretenders try to float over our heads. -- Denis Leary
I do films which get me out of my comedian routine so that I don't get bored being a stand-up comedian. And with films, it's here today, gone tomorrow. So stand-up comedy is here to stay for me. -- Vir Das
New York State is giant and has some of the most beautiful landscape on the Eastern seaboard. There is so much history in New York State, from the Erie Canal to the Catskills, the birth of American stand-up comedy. -- Adam Savage
I just love entertaining. I will do anything - stand-up comedy, video games, fencing, internet shorts - I just want to keep being lucky enough to entertain people anyway I can. I try never to limit my art to a medium. -- Matthew Gray Gubler
I kind of thought that stand-up comedy would suffer from the Internet because people seem to know more about the craft of stand-up than ever before. I thought it would seem trite. Kind of like if you know more about magicians, you wouldn't love them. -- Jerry Seinfeld
I did stand-up comedy for 18 years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four years were spent in wild success. I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a byproduct. The course was more plodding than heroic. -- Steve Martin
I play these sort of comical instruments I invented, like the electric rake and the electric plunger. I do a lot of almost stand-up comedy material. Just the juxtaposition of the different styles in itself sometimes is funny. Like, I do sort of an acoustic version of 'Purple Haze' that has some bluegrass licks in it. -- Eugene Chadbourne
You know, it wasn't even that I'm a funny guy, I just loved stand-up comedy and I wanted to do it. It was one of the few things in my life that I knew I was going to be able to do, and I also felt as though I'd be able to do it the way I wanted to do it. -- Bill Burr
Stand-up can take you in so many different places, man. So many doors can be opened up from stand-up comedy, and the first one that was opened up for me was acting. But you can go from acting to being a TV personality to being a radio personality to being a writer to being a producer, to just being a visionary, to voiceover work. -- Kevin Hart
My sense of stand up comedy would be so esoteric. -- Paul Rudd
I don't have any type of sketch-comedy or stand-up background. -- Jenna Fischer
I do some of my best stand-up comedy during sound checks. -- Madonna Ciccone
I usually have sex to my stand-up comedy album. Power move. -- Jeff Ross
For me, the way I stay consistent is through stand-up comedy. -- Kevin Hart
You know, stand-up comedy is where I pretty much started out. -- Brion James
I'm in a sketch comedy group in school and I also do stand-up. -- Jack Quaid
When you are doing stand-up comedy, you are the writer, producer, director, sometimes bouncer. -- Dane Cook
I think stand-up comedy is this - it's this kind of indulgence and narcissism. -- Jim Gaffigan
Doing stand-up comedy is in the middle of a traffic jam getting everybody moving again. -- Jon Stewart
As a live stand-up comedy performer, I have the benefit of choosing real entrance music. -- John Hodgman
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Stand-up comedy is like the lowest medium in all of show business in levels of respect. -- Chris Rock
I better start doing stand up comedy in Spanish before every comedian in Mexico translates my jokes. -- Felipe Esparza
London seems to be a town with a lot of comedy fans and people that really enjoy stand-up. -- Aziz Ansari
I go to a lot of stand-up comedy. I find more inspiration from observational stuff than from rap. -- Riz Ahmed
After graduation, I was floundering in L.A., doing stand-up comedy and working in a shoe store in the Valley. -- Kevin Spacey
I am a guy who talks about bacon and escalators. Stand-up comedy is very much a conversation. It's very personal, stylistically. -- Jim Gaffigan
All of comedy at some level is trial-and-error, whether it's a stand-up trying out jokes or a comedy show trying stories. -- Michael Schur
I do think that stand-up comedy in general heavily favors masculinity and so I like to act a little feminine onstage. -- Bo Burnham
Real comedy can't be learned; it comes from a need for justice. The best who stand up, stand up for something. -- Elayne Boosler
With stand-up, there's a little bit of an exaggerated reality because things have to be manipulated to create comedy, to create jokes. -- Chris Hardwick
Stand-up and comedy is the place where we are supposed to be able to make fun of all of the world's ills. -- Tracy Morgan
I do podcasts for the same reasons I do stand-up comedy. I love it, and I don't care if anybody else gets it. -- Chris Hardwick
On MySpace ... the whole demographic of the stand-up comedy fan has changed. It's like an indie band thing. People think they've discovered you. -- Jim Gaffigan
Stand-up keeps you alive. It is definitely the most specialized field in comedy because you need to stay sharp and well-tuned every night. -- Tommy Davidson
I hate being mean. I watch those roasts on Comedy Central and they make the hair on the back of my neck stand up. -- Downtown Julie Brown
I hate being mean. I watch those roasts on Comedy Central and they make the hair on the back of my neck stand up. -- Downtown Julie Brown
A really good stand-up comic is a poet; it's about the use of language. It can be really poetic. And I like politically conscious comedy. -- Sherman Alexie
As far as just my stand-up is concerned, I don't care about changing anyone's mind. I'm not making an argument. I'm a guy doing comedy. -- David Cross
There's so much you can achieve with a launching pad like stand-up comedy. You can literally go from acting to hosting to being a personality. -- Kevin Hart
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. -- Jim Gaffigan
My mom and dad are both in stand-up comedy, so that's where I started, that's where I got everything. My roots are holding the mic. -- Pauly Shore
It's the ultimate pinnacle of stand-up to have an hour on HBO, but way more people see Comedy Central, and they've been good to me. -- Daniel Tosh
Did you know I started out as a stand-up comic? People don't believe me when I tell them. That's how I saw myself, in comedy. -- Al Pacino
I think of a lot of comedy being watched alone, for some reason. It's surprising to me that people are getting together to watch stand-up comedy. -- Gary Gulman
Improv seemed to replace stand-up, which was very big before that. Stand-up comedy was real hot in the late '80s and through the '90s. -- Joe Flaherty
As soon as I did my first five minutes of stand-up I knew that I would rather be a failure at comedy than a success in marketing. -- Jimmy Carr
If you are doing stand-up comedy, you have to be confident in what you are doing. That doesn't mean just because you are confident you are funny. -- Judah Friedlander
I've been doing stand-up just about every night since I started in 1989. It's my home base. But I'm into doing comedy in all mediums, platforms and situations. -- Judah Friedlander
Having done stand-up on television and in stand-up specials for like Comedy Central, you learn quickly that for that type of performance you're playing to the camera. -- John Mulaney
Stand-up is not just an American thing anymore. It's global. In some places, stand-up comedy is brand new. South Africa has only had a scene for 15 years. -- Gabriel Iglesias
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I took a job in a comedy club - not doing stand-up comedy, because that's my idea of hell, but in the office - and I went traveling. -- Phoebe Fox
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. -- Jeff Dunham
A lot of stand-up comedy guys, when they get a little famous, just give up their stand-up career, and it cancels out the thing that set them apart. -- Johnny Knoxville
I'm not a comedian. I don't do stand-up. I don't tell jokes. I'm a comedic actor, and approach my work that way. The comedy comes through the character. -- Eugene Levy
You really have no idea whether or not what you're writing is funny. In stand-up and sketch comedy, you know right away and you can make your changes accordingly. -- Michael Showalter
A lot of stand-up comedy is embarrassing: too many idiots doing it in orange neckties against brick walls. I find most sitcoms embarrassing, too, because they seem so forced. -- Tracey Ullman
Saturday Night Live was a show that I never thought I would be on, because I didn't do sketch comedy and I didn't do impressions. I was a stand-up. -- Kevin Nealon
I personally have no interest in being a star or a celebrity. I want my stand-up comedy and how I think as a comedian to be recognized and successful. -- Jim Gaffigan
When you're a stand-up, you play in front of 600 people, and it's all about timing. I could never do stand-up comedy; it would be way too hard for me. -- Dean Norris
I think a lot comes from having the experience of doing stand-up comedy. It allows you to figure out the psychology of an audience; what things are funny and not. -- Keenen Ivory Wayans
Stand-up comedy had an interesting effect on me in terms of how I started to think about constructing things, because I really loved the interstices, the linkages, or lack thereof. -- Mark Leyner
I've a belt that I have worn for every single stand-up comedy session since I was 19. I fear if I ever lose it, my career would crumble. That's my one OCD. -- Vir Das
Stand-up can take you in so many different places, man. So many doors can be opened up from stand-up comedy, and the first one that was opened up for me was acting. -- Kevin Hart
I can do more than just stand-up comedy, and the only way I'll be able to show that is if I do it myself. Because nobody trusts that I can do it. -- Dane Cook
I'm a stand-up comic. Anything else I do besides that is a plus, but stand-up comedy is what I do, it's what I've been doing and it's what I'm going to keep doing. -- Dave Attell
I think people tune in to watch a football game because they want to watch a football game. If they wanted to watch a stand-up comedy show on HBO, that's where they'd go -- Dan Dierdorf
But sometimes it's good to dare yourself to do the unthinkable. And rather than stand in front of an audience with no clothes on, I decided to have a go at stand-up comedy. -- Evan Davis
I have a work-out regime; I am not a maniac. It sounds cliche, but stand-up comedy, doing a one-man show, helps keep me young, and yes, it is exhausting, but I don't collapse. -- Robert Klein
People need to write articles and they need to have angles in them and I'm grateful when people are doing articles, but I always say there's not a great mystery to stand-up comedy. -- Jim Gaffigan
When I started stand-up - and this is in the '90s - there was definitely people hadn't watched decades of Comedy Central, where people are really much more educated on stand-up comedy. -- Jim Gaffigan
You're on stage and because stand-up comedy is one of the few meritocracies in the entertainment industry, there's some kind of - at least for me, there's some kind of idea of control. -- Jim Gaffigan
Georgia was a great place to live, but I wanted to get out because I knew the opportunities for what I was doing - stand-up comedy and eventually acting - were in Los Angeles. -- Chris Tucker
I'd been doing some light-beer commercials for Budweiser and Coors, and I was doing stand-up comedy. I wanted to get into the acting world, and my agent sent me on audition and they liked it. -- Kevin Nealon

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