Best 648 quotes in «comedian quotes» category

To be a comedian: Make peace with the fact that you will never be as funny as a baby falling over.

To be a comedian, you have to have some darkness behind it. I certainly draw on my past, and it helps.

Today's comedian has a cross to bear that he built himself. A comedian of the older generation did an act and he told the audience, This is my act. Today's comic is not doing an act. The audience assumes he's telling the truth. What is truth today may be a damn lie next week.

To have a reputation for being noble, she thought, is more confining than to be known as a wit. On the rare days when a comedian has no jokes, people pardon the lapse. There is no forgiving a saint's occasional day of sin.

To me, seeing a really great comedian is a bit like watching a musician or a poet.

Two cannibals were eating a comedian, and one of them turns to the other and asks, 'Does this taste funny to you?

Up North you are holding your own. Everyone considers themselves a comedian.

Using blasphemy as entertainment is as cheap as a comedian telling a fart joke.

We are living in the machine age. For the first time in history the comedian has been compelled to supply himself with jokes and comedy material to compete with the machine. Whether he knows it or not, the comedian is on a treadmill to oblivion.

We live in a fun time with so many ways to express yourself, you would be crazy to be a comedian and not check them all out.

Well, anybody can be a straight man if he hears well. You just have to wait for laughs. A straight man just repeats the questions and the comedian gets the laughs and you just wait for them and don't let them die completely at the tail end of the laugh.

What do you call a comedian who runs for president? A trump card.

Well, a lot of politics is communicating with people, and obviously comedy has something to do with that. I've been a producer and led people. Also, being a comedian, you're under pressure.

Well, I was lost but now I live here! I have severely improved my predicament!

We mustn't complain too much of being comedians - it's an honorable profession. If only we could be good ones the world might gain at least a sense of style. We have failed - that's all. We are bad comedians, we aren't bad men.

What great comedians, great comic writers, great comic actors do is that they just read the headlines with the right eyebrow position and it's funny.

Whatever talent I had, I'm sure it helped that my parents were in the business and that I grew up around actors, comedians and directors.

What happens after you die? Lot's of things happen after you die - they just don't involve you

What I like about stand-up is, it's truthful. I'm not up there trying to get laid or look cool. I'm up there because I really love it, and it makes people happier.

What's the good thing about being an actor, you can do more things. Not just being a comedian, not going overboard but expressing myself within the confines of a film.

What I say is stupid. Who takes a comedian seriously? I'm doing sophisticated knock-knock jokes.

What makes a comedian has nothing to do with religion. Think of Red Skelton, Jimmy Durante, Jackie Gleason, who were all Catholics.

What really got my goat at MGM were comedians like The Marx Brothers who never wrote their own jokes.

What I love about comedians is their instinct is always to go against the grain. Their whole existence is pointing out the elephant in the room. Already you can see audiences are pushing back, but we're the ones who really can take it more than anybody.

When a soldier of the night's watch dies they say, "And now his watch is over." That's what they say when a comedian dies. They go, "And now his tour is done.

What you have to do as a comedian, that I suppose is quite difficult, is you have to end it. All the stuff that I've ever done in the past - all the tours - no matter how good it was last year or the year before, that's gone. What exists this year only exists in this time, and then it will be gone.

When comedians get successful, the fans that they have aren't the fans they would hang out with. I don't have that problem.

Whenever you correct someone's grammar just remember that nobody likes you.

When I approach villains, unless it's a drama, I'm a comedian, so I approach most things from a comedic point of view.

When I used to watch comedians with my dad, he laid it all out for me. He wanted to be a comedian himself, and he was so funny. We'd watch stand-up on TV, and he'd tell me the subtext of what they were saying.

When it comes to English stand-up comedy, Indians have only seen the best - Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Cosby and the like. So, when someone claims to be an English stand-up comedian in India, he'd better be very good if he's going to make a life of it.

When I did Comic Relief, I did it to be on the show; it's a badge of honor as a comedian to do that show.

When I see a good singer, I get teary-eyed. Part of it is jealousy because all comedians are frustrated rock stars. That's a fact.

When I told my friends I was going to be a comedian, they laughed at me.

When I was a kid, I loved all the silent comedians - Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, Chaplin. And I used to imitate them. I'd go to see a Buster Keaton movie and come home and try things out I'd seen. I learned to do pratfalls when I was very young.

When somebody mangles one of my jokes, that bothers me more than somebody saying that I'm the worst comedian ever.

When I was younger I always thought, 'If I were ever a comedian I'd make it like a rock concert.' I wanted to generate that type of enthusiasm and excitement.

When I was seven, I said, "I want to act." When I was 10, I realized that films exist, and I wanted to be in them. Not a comedian, I wanted to be a dramatic actor. Films just seemed such fun, and like such a great thing to do.

When I was ten, I wrote an essay on what I would be when I grew up and said I would be a professional soccer player and a comedian in off season.

When you do late-night TV, you do different jokes in the same place every night. When you're on the road as a comedian, you do the same jokes in a different place every night.

When they put me in jail, that's when they turned me into an activist. Up until the time I went to jail, I was just a comedian.

When you go to standup, there seems to be a common denominator of some form of need or want for validation from the audience that maybe you were lacking as a kid.

When you hang around a lot of comedians long enough, you realize there's a certain gene, in every comedian. It's why we get hyper-analytical about things.

When you hear "Seinfield," no one says, "the Jewish comic." You talk about Cedric the Entertainer, you don't say, "African American comedian Cedric the Entertainer." Even Margaret Cho - who's like one of three Korean performers out there - no one refers to her like that. They say, "It's Margaret Cho.

When young comedians ask me for advice that's the one thing I always say is if they're improvisers I'm like do improv, don't make that your sole thing. And at the end of the day when you do your best work you also just kinda, by definition flush it down the toilet and never do it again.

When you're a comedian, the Holy Grail is an hour long HBO special.

When you're 17 years old, you have no idea who you are as a person, so there's no way you can be a good performer. You can't be a good comedian, because you don't know who you are, you don't know what you're saying. Stand-up is nothing but an expression of self-awareness. It wasn't until I was 23, 24 that I got to have a handle on a perspective on life, where I became decent. And I was just a terribly socially awkward younger person.

When you start in the childhood period, when you begin to form a comic sense, it was the radio comedians - from the last days of radio and the first days of television. And Spike Jones. And the Marx Brothers. They represented anarchy. They took things that were nice and decent and proper, and they tore them to shreds. That attracted me.

While painting I noticed a piece of madras cloth on the floor. As usual, my mind started working overtime and a pair of scissors and a small amount of glue later...I created THE COMEDIAN. Everybody loved the uniqueness of the painting. It was indeed a hit.

Why should we tell kidnappers, murderers, and embezzlers their rights? If they don't know their rights, they shouldn't be in the business.