Top 185 Standup Quotes

When you‘re a standup comic, you get up and you try stuff, and you’re always kind of seeing how far you can push things.

Right around 11 or 12, when I saw Eddie Murphy‘s standup special ‘Delirious,’ and I taped it on a VHS tape – I think I watched it every single day. I lived and breathed Eddie Murphy for that whole year.

There’s no idea or concept in comedy you could do that hasn’t been attacked from some angle. But if you start leaving punchlines out so you’ll look cool, I don’t get that. But I don’t watch standup anyway, so I don’t know what they’re doing.

People see a lot of my standup, and that’s what I’m known for since I was trained in karate and kickboxing, but I also have ground game.

I think when you write something as standup material, it forces you to think about how you’re gonna tell that story in one way, and then, when you get the opportunity to shoot it, you almost have to reframe how you go about it and rethink the entire process.

I still do standup.

Whether it’s writing a monologue or writing standup or writing a screenplay or writing a play, I think staying involved in the creation of your own work empowers you in a way, even if you don’t ever do it. It gives you a sense of ownership and a sense of purpose, which I think as an actor is really important.

I wanted to do comedy, but I didn’t grow up wanting to be a standup.

I’ve sold shows based on my standup twice to CBS, but they’ve never gone past the script stage. TV is very competitive.

I’m sure when alternative comedy started, before which – Billy Connolly aside – standup was essentially a person being racist and sexist onstage, there was also the sense that this was the death of comedy. But it’s just progress.

My wife and I take what we call our Friday comedy day off. We watch standup comics on TV. The raunchier the better. We love Eddie Izzard.

I don’t like to post fresh standup material, because I want to use it in a special. The stuff I like to post online I like to be off-the-cuff moments.

I’d like to go back to standup. I don’t like to think I’ve done my last gig. At the moment it terrifies me, I get really nervous. It’s a great buzz when it goes well.

Richard Lewis has this incredible ability to look like he’s just… you know it’s an act that’s been honed. What you have to do in standup is create spontaneity, somehow; even though you’ve done this act a million times, you gotta look like you’re almost just thinking of it now, to make it entertainer.

Whenever people hear that Kurt Cobain was a fan of my standup, it’s like hearing Jimi Hendrix loved Buddy Hackett or something.

I did a lot of standup from ages 19 to 24 but then stopped to focus on sketch with Broken Lizard.

Standup is like shorthand. Every bit must be both brief and profound or the audience will lose interest.

The energy of the metal is what I’ve always loved and the energy I do on stage with standup, I mean, I’m not Metallica, but I’ve always extremely attracted and driven by that energy and the thought-provoking lyrics and drive. That’s an attitude every standup show I go in. I go in to crush your face.

No one goes into standup to make money. The frustration and rejection are just too much.

The idea that standup is a thing with defined boundaries is kind of ludicrous.

I think expressing yourself and working hard can’t help but have great results. Look at Zach Galifanakis. He didn’t tweet. He didn’t have a podcast. He just went out and did the funniest standup you’ll ever see in your life. And he was rewarded for that.

I would call it a comedy variety show. We have some people just doing straight standup. We usually try to have one musical act of sort. So its just people being funny in different ways, not just sketch, not just standup, not just characters, all of those things.

I wouldn’t call myself a standup in the presence of Jerry Seinfeld or Chris Rock, but I do my share of it and it has been and remains part of my activity and I like it.

That’s what’s great about standup comedy: the instant feedback. You get up on stage, you tell a joke, if it doesn’t work, come back the next day with a better version of it.

Standup comedy is inordinately difficult. If doing something else for a living will make you equally happy, choose that instead. I’m serious. Comedy is punishing.

When I finished my residency in New Orleans, I went to L.A. where I would work as a doctor during the day, and then at night I would actually go to The Improv and do standup, all the while kind of cultivating my comedy resume.

There’s no one on the road that I tried to pattern myself after. There’s no one in history that I tried to pattern myself after. Because one thing I was told that in standup you want to develop your own voice.

As a standup performer, I’m onstage, and it’s important how the audience is looking at me. I’m looking at whether they’re leaning forward or not, those types of things. You read an energy. And it’s the same thing in a scene with other actors.

I started writing sketches when I was 13. I liked Vic Reeves, Fry and Laurie, and Paul Merton, and I thought you could just send sketches to the BBC, and they’d go, ‘Great. We’ll put these on telly.’ But I gradually realised that you either had to go to university and join a club, or do standup.

If there are things that are off limits, why would you do standup?

You reach a point when you say to yourself, ‘Do I want to keep doing this?’ There are other things on my plate I want to do – I’ve been writing a play; I’ve been neglecting my standup.

A couple of female standup comics I know refer to their kids as their Little Career Killers. I was like, I really do not want to feel that way.

If you like standup and decide that it’s overtaking your life and want to hate it, watch 1,000 standup comedians who are trying to get on a TV show.

I have a standup I do in gay bars, and it’s filthy. I have to assess the crowd. If it’s an all-gay crowd, I’ll dip into the stories of my sordid past.

Standup is really the only thing in the entertainment business that you do totally alone.

People always come up to me and say, ‘you should do standup.’ It’s nice to discover things about yourself. That keeps everything lively and fun.

I crave the variety, I really do. I’d probably say standup as I think that’s what I do best, if I may say so. But it can be a really self-absorbed, obsessive way to live your life, whereas doing theatre is very collaborative and creative and intense, I’d hate to miss out on that.

I had a standup act, and I ended up turning it into something that was really watered down and accessible. Something that went from scary and threatening to something that was almost to the point of being corny.

In standup, you look for a common ground that people have.

Standup is a place where, as long as it’s funny enough, you can say your most embarrassing things, shameful things and disappointing things.

Sometimes people come to my standup show, and they think they’re going to see Doug Wilson. Or they see me on the street, and they call me Doug Wilson.

My standup is observational, but it’s self-observational, and it’s self-deprecating, definitely.

I guess standup is really painting pictures with words – especially for me, as I describe quite fantastical, visual things. My art teacher, Dexter Dalwood, always seemed to think they were linked. We bonded over our love of Vic Reeves.

I never decided I wanted to be an actor. I just started doing standup because I love standup. Everything else has sort of been these tiny steps leading to this.

Standup really is a young man‘s game, a single young man’s game. Even when I was younger, when I wasn’t single, it was hard to be on the road because you go through relationships because your girlfriend kinda got tired of you being gone.

Standup is a form of therapy. It is OK to tell problems to your audience as long as you are being honest and not boring them. I tell them that I am saving $75 an hour when I talk to them instead of a therapist.

I guess that I was always considered a little too weird for the standup clubs and probably too jokey for doing performance art and those places where those are done.

Until I started doing standup, there were some very bleak days.

I got into standup because I wanted to be an actor, and then I ended up loving standup for the next eleven years.

Once you’re in a room like ’30 Rock,’ it’s a creative setting, so you write more even after you go home, just because you’re still in that mode of coming up with jokes. So the job wasn’t sapping standup jokes, but it was sapping stand up time and energy, and I wouldn’t be able to travel as much.

People say I’m good at standup. I don’t even think I’m that great at standup. I just hit hard. I don’t think I’m super technical or anything like that. I got a couple knockouts. I think I just hit hard more than anything.

It may have lost its special-ness forever and the clubs might not being doing well but I think standup is in the best shape it has been in a long time.

Growing up, I didn’t really watch a lot of standup. I didn’t know you could be a low-energy comedian. It was something I did daydream about, but in the way you daydream about becoming the president or something – it could never happen.

You can play a gig as a band and not know that they hated you; with standup, after every line, you know.

I personally knew and worked with Sammy Davis, Jr. Sammy hired me to open for him at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas when I was a 19-year-old standup comedian, and that’s where my fascination with his incredible story began.

Tracy Ullman, I grew up watching her shows and standup and improv and specials. Bette Midler and Whoopi Goldberg. They inspire me to do it all. I always wanted to do it all; I never wanted to be put in a box.

I thought I could see how standup worked. I never thought of being an actor – or anything else, really – but I thought, ‘I can see how you get on stage and tell jokes.’

If I’m a game show host, will someone buy a ticket to see me do standup? To do a dramatic role in a movie?

I did standup while still working for Johnny Carson in the mid-’60s, thus gaining the advantage of at least getting laughs from him about how I hadn’t the night before.

Technology can’t eliminate the need for people going to want to go out and see theater and standup comedy.

I’m talking about some real subjects and issues in my standup. I’m attempting to make a point about technology and how it’s changing our society and our lives, and our addiction to social media, and how it affects marriages and relationships.

I do standup once a year, when I host the CMAs.

I didn’t have any terrible survival jobs. The main job I had before I was able to transition over to acting full-time was working at an after-school program at a middle school teaching improv and standup. So even when I had a regular job, I was still lucky enough to be doing the stuff I loved in some way.

I’m a touring standup comedian so a lot of the time I’m looking for box sets that I can put on my computer to pass the time on train journeys. I have far too much free time for an adult.

Standup is a tough job and a gritty job.

The experience of watching other standups is either: 1) you see your mate doing standup and it’s really bad and you’re heartbroken, or 2) You see your mate doing really well and it’s heartbreaking.

I think that standup has always been an acquired taste and there was always only a handful of performers that were really inspired.

When I was doing standup, I always wanted to get out of the standup world and take it back into the theatrical world, like with ‘No Cure For Cancer.’

Early on, people told me I was making Chinese people look bad. I’ve been living with this accent. I had already been doing standup for a while. I knew my voice already. I myself never wanted to make my accent the butt of the joke. I never want it to be, ‘I’m laughing at your accent.’

Once I started getting serious about standup I got a better handle on word economy and making jokes punchier, which translated well to Twitter.

I’ve done a lot of dramedies in my career. You know, I started as a standup comic, and then the movies that I was doing, like ‘Up Side of Anger‘ were kind of like – they’re hard. They’re hard to sell; they’re hard to get made, you know.

Standup keeps me grounded and keeps me in touch. I get to go from small towns to big cities, across Canada and the U.S., and you’re out there and talking to people. You get a sense of what they respond to.

I don’t know what the secret to doing standup well is, but I do know the goal is to be yourself as much as possible. And working harder than everyone else.

People see me on the ‘Daily Show‘ or ‘About a Boy’. But the reality is that I only got into this business to do standup comedy.

To say it very honestly, removed from ego, standup is just a thing that I understood, a God-given ability.

There are many styles of standup, but the comedians I like are people like Dick Gregory and Richard Pryor. Because Richard Pryor told the truth. Chris Rock. I love Chris Rock. He’s funny, but he’s also poignant. He’s not there just to make people laugh; he’s there to make people wake up, too.

You really have to be ambitious and have that drive to really become well known and successful as a standup.

In my early years doing standup, I bombed a lot.

I love standup, but not the grind of traveling and dealing with club owners.

I don’t enjoy writing newspaper articles any more than people like reading them. I’m a standup comic, not a journalist, although sometimes onstage I will say: ‘What else is in the news?’ Writing is work, which I’m not comfortable with.

There’s something so naked about being on stage as a musician. I think about that even with standup comedy or something – like, ‘This is it, this is what I got.’

I’m a standup comedian, so I need people.

I’m more of a sketch guy than a standup.

I have yet to see one of those Comedy Central shows with multiple standup comics that doesn’t include someone the size of the Hindenburg.

I did all this standup comedy in college, and from that point on, I tried to develop myself and get my name back out there.

As a comedian, it really gelled when I started doing standup. Because standup is so much about bravery, especially in the early days. There is no doubt that it is going to go terribly for you over and over and over again. But you cannot get funny without bombing.

I am not a big fan of very prepared standup. I like when Dave Attell writes and I appreciate it but I much more enjoy with he does crowd work. I’m not that kind of comic that prepares a specific set. If I see a comic do the same prepared set night after night I am so bored.

Standup led me to acting because I liked standup, and I saw people on a stage, and the closest, nearest thing to me was doing plays. It was like, that’s the same thing as standup – people are on a stage; they’re being seen and saying things – so, because of my love of standup, I moved towards acting.

When I said I could beat Alexander Gustafsson in a standup fight, people laughed at me. They thought, ‘No way.’ But I believe in what I’m seeing every day.

Kids have to understand that they have control. Not their parents, not the principal, not the president of the U.S. It starts with them and it ends with them. To end this epidemic of bullying they have to standup for one another.

My standup is years and years of me working things out on the road. I’m really proud of it! A lot of it is about, well… I don’t know why I feel this way, but I feel like every special or show I do is some variation on how I feel like I’m not a girl, not yet a woman.

I can’t imagine a time I don’t want to do standup.

In standup, the feedback is instantaneous, and if it fails, you know you’ll be off-stage and hiding in a short time.

The misconception is that standup comics are always on. I don’t know any really funny comics that are annoying and constantly trying to be funny all the time.

I thought I would be too vulnerable on stage doing standup. I didn’t want to get up there and say: ‘This is who I am. I want you to like me.’

You don’t know that you’re not a solo artist or standup comedian or drag cabaret artist until you try it.

I had never done a roast, but I really wanted to, because it’s so different from standup.

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.

If I was doing standup I would worry that someone would think I was being preachy, whereas, with a character, it always tends to be the opposite of what I think. You can get away with things.

Anybody who’s done standup will tell you that there’s nothing like it. The show starts at 8:00, the curtain goes up and there’s nobody else except you and the audience, and you just perform for them for two hours. Nobody yells, ‘Cut!’ There are no retakes. That is still the most exciting medium for me, and I love it.

I believe, even when I’m doing my standup or my acting or whatever I’m doing, I believe in painting pictures.

I really love standup because it’s something that I’ve been literally doing for 40 years, which means I’m a thousand years old.

I don’t talk about having cancer in my standup anymore. I don’t have cancer. But if it comes up for me again, that I’m going through something, I’m going to talk about it. I’m going to do whatever feels right whenever it feels right.

In standup, it’s just you. You’re your own writer, your own critic, your own director, and it’s never the same. You really don’t always have it down. Your continue to learn, you continue to risk, and I really love it.

It’s not a hard job, radio or standup, there are hard parts of it, sure. There are guys who do ten hours of construction a day don’t want to hear me talk about my job being difficult. Compared to what a lot of people do, this is genuinely easy.

One of the first jokes I wrote was this nail salon bit that ended up blowing up on YouTube. That’s kind of what propelled me into standup.

Every performer I talk to will, with different words, talk about the sanctity of a good standup show, how it can really feel spiritual. When everybody is laughing, fixed on the same thing, you feel like you transcend yourself.

I do standup every week in L.A. at the Laugh Factory and the Improv.

I was a standup comic, which doesn’t necessarily mean you interact with people all that much. In fact when I did shows, I wouldn’t talk to the audience very much. Then my friend offered me a radio show, and I thought, you know, I’ll try talking to people and see what kind of interviewer I was.

I stopped doing standup because it stopped being fun. And the reason it stopped being fun was it was harder to write – and this was before the Internet – it was harder to write new stuff. It had gotten so crazy.

I was a kid, and I would watch standup comics do the ‘Tonight Show,’ and if Johnny Carson liked you, he’d wave you over to the desk; that pretty much meant you were about to be the most successful comedian in the country for the next few years.

I think standup is pretty good for an introvert because you are performing, but, I mean, it’s on your own terms. There are so many people in the room, but it’s a one-sided conversation. And you actually don’t have to interact – unless you want to.

I listen to a lot of standup comics.

It’s the hardest job in telly as a newbie. You’re writing standup every night on your own and presenting live TV. It’s like a really tough apprenticeship in front of two million people.

I think as a standup performer you have to feel the audience. So the audience kind of dictates what they get, you know?

I never did standup before. It just looked like it was really hard, looked like there was like up days and down days – and I’m too emotionally unstable for that. I need to always be funny and always be loved.

This is my chance to get out there and appease the fans of my music as well as show people that I do do standup comedy because a lot of people don’t know that’s where I started.

Other kids would sneak out of the house to go to parties and do untoward things. I was sneaking out to do standup downtown. It paid off.

In standup, you must be able to hypnotize the audience.

I would hate to be a standup comedian for ever. It would not be good. It would be the worst.

I’m a big fan of Louis CK – I think he’s a master of standup.

My mom ending up passing away, and I got really depressed and didn’t have money for therapy, and so I started doing standup to cope with my mom’s death.

At the end of the day, I’m not really trying to make a statement with any of my standup.

I really never had any ambitions to be a standup comic. I was talked into it by guys that I used to work out with.

I’m really good at standup. I always win at standup.

I don’t do standup.

My dad‘s pretty funny. He’s funny for all of the wrong reasons. The first time I did standup at Edinburgh he sat in the front row and wore sunglasses because he didn’t want to put me off.

Today, I am a touring standup comic who cannot stand up. Within three minutes, I begin to wilt, lose my balance, and topple over. I can tap dance and run in heels, but I need to use a wheelchair to navigate airports.

We’ve all seen comedians look like they’re reaching just a little bit too much for the laugh. This is counterproductive. The conceit of standup is that it is effortless, which makes the prospect of generating new comedy a tricky one: you are trying to be funny without looking like you are trying to be funny.

When I go into schools to speak, I am not giving a speech – it’s really a one-man show. I call it ‘didactic standup.’

I always imitated other people and thought, ‘Well, maybe I’ll do standup,’ but I was too afraid for that.

Standup is essentially part of your personality with the volume turned up.

Unlike ‘Deal or No Deal,’ which is for the entire family, my standup is not for the entire family.

I’m a standup comedian who can’t drive. I have never learned. I don’t trust my hand-eye coordination. You’re looking at someone who once dropped a cricket ball on to his own head during a routine catching practice; I don’t think it’s a great idea to have me in control of a high-speed metal death robot.

I was working at Nordstrom Rack, Borders Books, and I was cleaning yachts on the weekends for private parties and being a busboy. I had to break down the tables and roll the forks up in napkins. And I was still doing standup.

The demand for standup in the eighties was created by how easy it was to exploit ‘comedians’ and create very cheap television programming.

I even get tired performing standup, which is normally a low-impact exercise in futility but looks hard the way I do it. That’s why I take a lot of breaks, often stopping in the middle of a joke to catch my breath, or blame the crowd for not laughing before the punchline.

People would say, Can we develop a sitcom around you? and I would say, Not interested. I’m very happy doing standup and writing and taking my kids to school.

It’s weird because standup can be like therapy. Comedians can’t be satisfied with just having fun with our friends. We’ve got to figure out a way to do it on stage.

I’ve skewered whites, blacks, Hispanics, Christians, Jews, Muslims, gays, straights, rednecks, addicts, the elderly, and my wife. As a standup comic, it is my job to make sure the majority of people laugh, and I believe that comedy is the last true form of free speech.

If someone doesn’t like a comedian that’s fine; a lot of people probably don’t like my standup, and that’s fine. But I think that the problem is people want you to get in trouble. That’s the issue.

I had a great time on News Radio, I got to make tons of money in relative obscurity and learn a lot about the TV biz and work on my standup act constantly. It was a dream gig.

I don’t want to be a spokesman for family values, but that’s the way my standup is perceived.

Standup is just dirtier, a far more risque kind of thing.

The thing about the performance part… starting with improv and standup, you’re starting with yourself as the character, and I don’t feel as much like, ‘Oh, I’m a vessel for -‘ I feel like someone who calls themselves an actor is a vessel.

Sometimes I start off shows by explaining to people that it’s just a bunch of stories – I always say ‘It’s like standup, just less funny.’

Over the years, I’ve realized that I have as much in common with the performance artist, the standup comedian, the screenwriter, as I do with the theologian. I’m in an odd world where I make things and share them with people.

I was raised by a dad who has a fantastic sense of humor who raised me on ‘The Muppet Show,’ Steve Martin movies, and Woody Allen‘s standup, and he really encouraged me to ham it up from an early age.

For me, standup will always be some part of my life, and other things will move around and find their place.

I first did standup at a lesbian bar. I didn’t know it was a lesbian bar at the time, but the lesbians loved me. I was huge among the lesbians and am to this day. I’m thrilled with the lesbian support.

I’ve always been a comedy nerd, and ‘Partners in Crime’ was probably more influential for me than anything else because it was not only standup, but Robert Townsend had those short films.

From fear to bonding with the audience to getting more open – that’s what standup is. It humanises you.

I’d decided to write about stuff that I would like to hear standup about.

As far as standup goes, I really feel like I can stand and bang and trade with anybody in the game.

Actors, you have to wait for people to give you work, or you have to make your own stuff. But standup, I could just say, ‘I want to do standup in 30 minutes,’ and I can go do standup. Or I could just say, ‘I want to do standup in a few weeks in this city.’

When I got a part in ‘All American Girl,’ in 1994, I remember thinking, ‘Now I have a series, I’m not going to need to do standup,’ but every night I’d go out afterward and get onstage somewhere.

Here’s the thing about standup directing: not that hard. As I said on Twitter one day, or maybe it was Instagram – sorry, I want to keep my platforms straight – it’s essentially the same five shots over and over again. Seven if you’re ambitious.

‘Dinner‘ is completely scripted. There are some improv elements, but I’m not interested in pranking people. It’s more like a play than standup.

I really love standup, and I really love writing standup.

As a standup comedian, you have to develop a sense of fearlessness. It’s really important for your livelihood and your well-being. And if you don’t do that, you’re going to fail; you’re never going to be able to stand up on the cliff and jump off.

There was a stage in my career, especially with standup, where I felt, because I didn’t know why I was doing well, that anyone who would tell me anything; I was sort of like, ‘What did they say? Yeah, I’ll take that advice.’ Now I’m a bit more careful who I choose to listen to.

In the entertainment industry, there is this fear of getting older, because we have high definition television now, and you can see things that the human eye can’t even pick up. But the good thing about standup is that the older you get, the funnier you get.

The name of my first comedy album was ‘Raised by Cable.’ Coming up and watching all of these weird movies on different channels was such an influence on me and an influence on how I do standup. It informs everything I do.

I have a hard time describing myself as a standup comedian because I don’t feel like I’m doing stand up jokes more than I am acting like a person who has a bad point of view.

Being in a male-dominated industry, you can feel like a little excluded. That was making me feel like maybe I’m not funny. I was really seriously considering, like, quitting standup.

Acting is completely different from the standup world. You have these 12- or 14-hour days, but you have a great time doing it. It’s like hanging out with your friends.

Black people who want to do comedy go into standup, where our heroes opened a lot of doors. Improv doesn’t have a ton of heroes that you can look to.

I have seven brothers and sisters, and they could all be standup comics!

Before I started doing standup, I knew that I had what it takes to develop an act. I went down to clubs with not many people there, and I just worked on it, man. A lot of my friends are comedians, so that part had a lot of encouragement, even though the shows were very caveman-like.

I’m a comedy geek so anything comedy related, whether that’s standup shows, improv shows, I’m all over that. That’s my favorite way to be entertained always.

In my standup work, I always do these characters, older people who are just off to the side. It’s easier to write a story about the guy who made it to the top, but the middle is so much more interesting, so much more murky.

I wanted to do standup, but I was too nervous. I felt it was too vulnerable basically to be yourself on stage.

It’s a young man’s game – standup comedy.

Metal is easily my favorite thing – Exodus and Anthrax and Megadeth – so it just kind of organically came through in the standup act.

I come to Maui and go surfing, standup paddling, slacklining, swimming, and free-diving.

We come from a live background of sketch improv and standup.

Both the benefit and the terrifying aspect of standup is when it’s going poorly, you’ve only yourself to blame. There’s no one to bail you out. But when it’s going great, all that approval is for you.

I used to do standup about footballers; they are easy targets because they are traditionally seen as stupid.

You have to have a thick skin, yes. If you’re going to do something as foolhardy as standup, you’ve got to be able to take it on the chin if someone has a go at you.

I continue to do standup because there’s a connection with a live audience – there are skills that you do learn as a standup comedian that help you on a set.

America is where standup comedy was born. It’s the standard. So you want to go and do your job where this is the mecca of what you do.

The thing is when I started doing standup, you had to have a clean act because that’s how you got on television. There weren’t all these cable shows. Also, I didn’t want to have that kind of act in case my family came to see me or my kid one day.

In improv, the whole thing is that it is a relationship between the two people, as a back and forth. In standup, you don’t really want to be listening to what somebody is saying; you want to project your jokes into their face.

I started doing standup when I was in college, and I would incorporate a lot of characters into my act.

Standup comedy was my weird hobby. I would drag my poor parents out to the only open mics that were in coffee shops instead of bars. I’d get up and go, ‘Hi, I’m 17, and I have jokes about matriculation!’ At the time I was like, ‘Why is no one laughing?’