Comedian Work Quotes & Sayings

When you deal with a comedian who has a specific act, you can't hold 'em back. You got to work with 'em, dude. What you think, I'm just gonna do what's on the page, say 'yes sir, no sir'? I'm creatively beyond that. — Pauly Shore

When you see a comedian on stage, the best comedians make it feel like a conversation. But it's not. We have very little interest in what an audience has to say during a performance. Being a stand-up comedian, you're an egomaniac to some degree. Everyone wants to hear what you have to say, apparently. That's not how real relationships work. — Hari Kondabolu

I came from a very different sort of background and pedigree from the people who were on "The Daily Show". I was an actor. I was sort of - the irony is that I've done as much dramatic work in my career as comedic work and I don't really think of myself as a comedian. — Aasif Mandvi

As the comedian Emo Phillips once said, "When I was a child, I used to pray to God for a bicycle. But then I realized that God doesn't work in that way - so I stole a bike and prayed for forgiveness! — Daniel C. Dennett

Every job from the heart is, ultimately, of equal value. The nurse injects the syringe; the writer slides the pen; the farmer plows the dirt; the comedian draws the laughter. Monetary income is the perfect deceiver of a man's true worth. — Criss Jami

I pushed against doing a podcast for so long. I'm a very late comer to the podcast game. But you're responsibility as a comedian is to get your viewpoints out into the world, and we have a lot more avenues to do that. So it's a lot more opportunity, but really have to work all the time. — Kurt Braunohler

I didn't become a comedian to work this hard. — Chelsea Handler

I would say most comedians have a very cynical worldview of the way the world can work. It's almost like if you didn't, you couldn't be a comedian. — Colin Quinn

I actually was a writer who had the ability to perform his own work as opposed to a comedian who wrote his own material. So that really made me happy and changed my whole perspective. — George Carlin

You're so hilarious. You know, if this whole Daimon-slaying gig doesn't work out for you, you should really consider being a comedian. The bright Barney hair color would just add to the overall entertainment factor. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I'm a good counter comedian. I can just work it off with looks, or have something crazy to say back. That works for me. — Ice Cube

Like every comedian, if I heard a joke that I thought would work, I used it. — Milton Berle

If you became a comedian in the '80s, you had to work the circuit and make people laugh. Canned laughter is cheating. — Paul Merton

Some comedians tell nice jokes that you can tell to your kids. Some use bad words - they work 'blue.' If you don't want to hear a joke that's blue, you shouldn't go to a comedy club where a comedian who makes blue jokes is performing. — Gilbert Gottfried

I'm very much a stand-up comedian in my heart. That's really what I do. Now I'm trying to incorporate all of the different elements of my work as a performer, and use it as a stand-up comedian. — Margaret Cho

All that the comedian has to show for his years of work and aggravation is the echo of forgotten laughter. — Fred Allen

A lot of the comedians nowadays just do comedy as a stepping stone. Take for example Dane Cook. The guy is huge. The main reason he got into it is to do what he is doing now: film and television work. — Gabriel Iglesias

The best part is just having a partner. There is no real worst part. I'm not going to say there's a worst part. I mean I'm a comedian - comedians like to work alone. So maybe I'm not the ideal guy to be married to, in that sense. — Chris Rock

I always focused on being an actor. I did stand-up briefly, but I also did a lot of dramatic work. But since I've been on 'The Daily Show,' people think I'm a comedian. That's not how I see myself. — Aasif Mandvi

I'm a comedian, and I like to work on my live show, and if I'm doing television, I don't have time to work on my live show, and I can become a lame comic, and that sucks. — Ron White

Comedy today is definitely skewed to the filthy side, but it's not as hard today as I am more mature as a comedian and a person. I'm a grown up now doing a kid's job. Being a more mature Christian these days makes it easier than when I first started. Now I get to do shows of my choosing and a lot of folks attending the shows know my work and expect a clean show. — Henry Cho

Since the 1980s, I've been known more for my TV work, I used to host 'Live at Jongleurs' and of course 'Grumpy Old Men,' and so it's really all come from there. It's been a funny career really, there are people that know me now as a TV person, a comedian, an interviewer - I've had people genuinely gobsmacked to find out I am a musician. — Rick Wakeman

COMEDIAN: [ ... ] What is it you do for a living?
HECKLER: I mind my own business.
COMEDIAN: Self-employed, eh? No really, what do you do?
HECKLER: I try not to do. — J. Ross Clara

Richard Pryor introduced me to the world of the inner city, and the urban world, and did it hysterically. My favorite comedian, even though we work 180 degrees differently, but funny is funny is funny. — Bob Newhart

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

If I wanted to take a more activist or journalistic slant in work, I should probably just go be an activist or a journalist. But I'm happy being a comedian. — John Oliver

I never wanted to churn it out. Comedians tend to work all the time. They never put it down like musicians who might make an album then take three or four years off to recharge their batteries. Comedians tend to work straight through and they get stale because of that. Even when I didn't have a lot of money I never ever did it unless I had something new to say. — Chris Rock

A calendar helps you plan work, gives you concrete goals, and keeps you on track. The comedian Jerry Seinfeld has a calendar method that helps him stick to his daily joke writing. He suggests that you get a wall calendar that shows you the whole year. Then, you break your work into daily chunks. Each day, when you're finished with your work, make a big fat X in the day's box. Every day, instead of just getting work done, your goal is to just fill a box. "After a few days you'll have a chain," Seinfeld says. "Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You'll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain." Get a calendar. Fill the boxes. Don't break the chain. — Austin Kleon

I don't have a lot of recreation time. I've always been under the assumption that if you're selling tickets you need to work. The kind of success that's happened to me maybe only happens to one comedian every twenty years and so I'm on the road constantly. — Larry The Cable Guy

At some point, I figured that it would be more effective and far funnier to embrace the ugliest, most terrifying things in the world
the Holocaust, racism, rape, et cetera. But for the sake of comedy, and the comedian's personal sanity, this requires a certain emotional distance. It's akin to being a shrink or a social worker. you might think that the most sensitive, empathetic person would make the best social worker, but that person would end up being soup on the floor. It really takes someone strong
someone, dare I say, with a big fat wall up
to work in a pool of heartbreak all day and not want to fucking kill yourself. But adopting a persona at once ignorant and arrogant allowed me to say what I didn't mean, even preach the opposite of what I believed. For me, it was a funny way to be sincere. And like the jokes in a roast, the hope is that the genuine sentiment
maybe even a goodness underneath the joke (however brutal) transcends. — Sarah Silverman

It may sound surprising, but a joke and a crime novel work in very much the same way. The comedian/writer leads their audience along the garden path. The audience know what's coming, or at least they think they do until they get hit from a direction they were not expecting. — Mark Billingham

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. — Bob Newhart

I was influenced by every comedian I ever saw work. That's the only way you learn how to do it. — Bob Newhart

Every comedian is just doing the comedy they find funny. This is me and it's not clean in any way. I could get a lot more work on TV playing clean but it's never interesting. — Jim Jefferies

Mel Brooks was a young fan at the time: 'Eddie Cantor was very important to me. Very influential on my work. The sketches were fast and furious - and Cantor was great at supporting the other guy in the sketch. It was Cantor who was making it all work for me. — Kliph Nesteroff

So I watched the Pink Panther last night, and so I'm trying desperately to be funny, and then it's just not working out so good ... I wonder if maybe I could've been a comedian or something like that, or maybe I could've been a doctor, then I wouldn't have to make anyone laugh. — Dave Matthews

Dave Chappelle is about as gifted as it gets, as a performer and comedian.It's always great to watch him work. He started around fourteen and he's in his forties now, so he's probably been doing it for close to thirty years. He's brilliant. — Ted Alexandro

I'm a standup comedian who gets to act. I'm never going to not do standup. I love doing it and when I go through periods where I'm doing a lot of acting work, I still do standup. — Bill Burr

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. — Anthony Jeselnik

Comedians work great as actors because they're good under pressure. With a lot of actors, you have to make them feel like everything's going really well to get a good performance out of them. But, if you have a comedian on the set, you can tell them, 'Hey, you really are screwing this up,' and then they just get better. — Louis C.K.

Some comedians you work with, they only turn on when the camera turn on, and they're like sad-faced clowns when the camera's off. And then, they come alive when the camera come on. And you be like, "Oh, damn. You're not a depressed ball of depression, but you are actually funny." — Ice Cube