Comedy Night Quotes & Sayings

The rules of improvisation appealed to me not only as a way of creating comedy, but as a worldview. Studying improvisation literally changed my life. It set me on a career path toward Saturday Night Live. It changed the way I look at the world, and it's where I met my husband. What has your cult done for you lately? — Tina Fey

There is no late-night comedy. You watch comedy, you watch whenever you want to tune on. You can it in the middle of the night. You can it in the morning. It's all comedy. They just label it late-night comedy so they don't have to pay as much. — George Schlatter

I can fly around the world in one night. I can wink and go up a chimney in a split second. I can be in 500 shopping malls on the same weekend. I can even fit enough gifts for the entire world into one tiny sleigh pulled by eight tiny reindeer, but I CANNOT FIX THIS CONFOUNDED COMPUTER! — Bobbi A. Chukran

One night while Joan Rivers was bombing at the Duplex in the Village, Lenny Bruce walked in and caught her act. He sent a note backstage: 'You're right and they're wrong. — Kliph Nesteroff

Every man who has reached even his intellectual teens begins to suspect that life is no farce; that it is not genteel comedy even; that it flowers and fructifies on the contrary out of the profoundest tragic depths of the essential dearth in which its subject's roots are plunged. The natural inheritance of everyone who is capable of spiritual life is an unsubdued forest where the wolf howls and the obscene bird of night chatters. — Henry James Sr.

I rock in his arms under the stars and the blanket of night air, unwilling or unable to tear myself away. — Lisa Daily

It's a real democratic time for comedy, and I think my special is a sign for that. You don't have to just be a classic stand-up to get a special, or you don't just have to be on Saturday Night Live to do characters and sketch on TV. The web has allowed me to show that there are different ways to make people laugh, and the special is a combination of those things. — Nick Kroll

I suppose the best comedy shows do have the rock n' roll feeling - if it's a great night, and the roof is raised ... yeah, it's a similar feeling, sure. — Dylan Moran

My God, Mace was all man, the kind of man every warm-blooded woman would love to take home for the night, tie to her bed and let loose on. Sitting this close to him, my mind conjured up a long list of things I could do, just with my mouth. — Lola Stark

The first night you walk down to a comedy club, at least for me, I had my voice, and then I went on stage and I lost it. — Bill Burr

Well, I loved variety in television, I loved sketch comedy. At 'Saturday Night Live,' I stayed almost seven years. — Dana Carvey

I got into comedy so I could stay out all night. — Artie Lange

So what do you do for sex? Just one-night stands? Or do you play a lot of five-on-one?
Clarissa — Tiffany Snow

The earliest stand-up comedy I was aware of was Bill Cosby. I watched Saturday Night Live as soon as I was aware of it, and Monty Python used to be on PBS at weird hours, so I used to try to watch that. And I loved George Carlin on SNL, that was the first stand-up I ever really remember seeing on TV. And then Steve Martin. I guess I was in fifth or sixth grade when Steve Martin showed up, and he was instantly my idol. And Richard Pryor around the same time too, I sort of became aware of him, though I don't remember the first time I saw him. — Louis C.K.

Trina stared into her open kitchen cabinets. She was two and a half days into her pre-date-night ritual fast, and she was about to crack. Technically, she wasn't going out on a date Saturday night, but Juliet was determined to have a man in her bed by the end of the evening. To be honest, Trina wasn't really looking forward to tomorrow night's manhunt. Sure, she was desperate for some hot monkey sex, but the thought of a one-night-stand was quickly losing its appeal. She wanted more than just plain, old sex. She wanted romance
preferably with someone for whom she didn't have to fast for three days to attract. — Lucie Simone

I started doing stand-up at the age of 20. This was back in 1976, around the time (coincidence?) that the first comedy clubs were starting. The young comedians of today gasp when I tell them how many shows I did that first year: 500. Five nights a week. — Emo Philips

Saturday Night Live is such a comedy boot camp in a way, because you get to work with so many different people who come in to host the show and you get thrown into so many situations and learn how to think on your feet, so filmmaking actually feels slow, in a good way. — Will Ferrell

I was always a silent comedy nerd. I would stay up late and sneak downstairs to watch 'Saturday Night Live' and 'Kids in the Hall,' and things like that. Very early on, my parents realized that I was not going to be an engineer or a doctor. I just don't have those inclinations, at all. — Mindy Kaling

A perkier bit at the beginning of a Three Stooges comedy, Restless Knights (February 20, 1935), has Brennan playing their father, decked out in a large night cap and a fake white beard, lying on his deathbed calling for his sons. He confesses in tremolo that they are of royal blood: "Years ago I was the royal chamberlain of the Kingdom of Anesthesia." Now, he urges them to offer their swords in service of their imperiled queen. The quality of the writing is best exemplified in Brennan's telling Curly that his title is "Baron of Grey Matter." Brennan then says, "Come close my sons so that I may bless you," and rises enough to give them a sweeping triple slap, as the light fades on his 120-second part in this sixteen minute short. — Carl Rollyson

Bob Hope was a blackface comedian. He abandoned it only because he was late for a gig: 'I missed the streetcar to this theater one night and I didn't have time to put the blackface on. Mike Shea, who booked all the theaters, said, "Don't ever put that stuff on your face anymore because your expressions after a joke are priceless. — Kliph Nesteroff

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 got home a little after seven, but didn't feel hungry. Instead, I crawled into my pajamas and pulled out my Jimmy Stewart movie It's a Wonderful Life. I fixed myself a cup of herbal tea and settled in for the night. Normally, I'd save such a classic movie for the holidays, when I tended to feel sorry for myself, but today's need felt urgent. If Jimmy was able to accept that he had a wonderful life, maybe I could, too. — J.C. Patrick

'Family Ties' was a very successful situation comedy. And, in almost every respect, it functioned on a day to day basis like a well-run, well conditioned basketball team. The show was performed live each week in front of a studio audience on Friday night. — Gary David Goldberg

You forget that sometimes comedy is just a big night out for people. Almost every show, people come up to me and go, 'This is the first comedy show I've ever seen,' so you want to do well. If you do horribly at somebody's first time seeing live stand-up, well, you've not only tainted yourself, you've tainted a whole art form. — Hannibal Buress

There are things I've given up on
Like recording funny answering machine messages.
It's part of growing older
And the human race as a group has matured along the same lines.
It seems our comedy dates the quickest.
If you laugh out loud at Shakespeare's jokes
I hope you won't be insulted
if I say you're trying too hard.
Even sketches from the original Saturday Night Live
seem slow-witted and obvious now. — David Berman

This," Alaric explained to Sarah in what he thought was a kindly voice, "isn't love you're feeling. Only dopamine. Because Felix isn't like anyone else you know. Being a creature of the night, he's new and exciting and activates a neurotransmitter in your brain that releases feelings of euphoria when you're around him ... especially because you know you can never actually be together, and he seems complicated, and perhaps even sensitive and vulnerable at times. But I can assure you: he's anything but."
"How dare you?" Sarah demanded hotly. "It isn't dopa ... whatever! It's love! Love! — Meg Cabot

'Saturday Night Live' was actually started with a show that Lorne Michaels and I did at a summer camp called Timberlane in Ontario when we were 14 and 15. We would do an improvisational show with music, comedy and acting. — Howard Shore

A tragedy is a tragedy, and at the bottom, all tragedies are stupid. Give me a choice and I'll take A Midsummer Night's Dream over Hamlet every time. Any fool with steady hands and a working set of lungs can build up a house of cards and then blow it down, but it takes a genius to make people laugh. — Stephen King

Richard leans on his stick. He takes a deep breath and begins to speak. "What a fucked up night? We get this tip that some clown is moving in, I fly off the handle, and off some poor schmuck's wife and I shoot the bastard. To make matters worse, I chop his fucking arm off." Vincent takes a shot and retorts. "The whole scene was fucking Shakespearean. Comedy juxtaposed against a tragic backdrop. — Z.S. Kaplan

When I hit my 20s, I struggled to make it. I got married at 19, and my daughter, Je'Niece, was born a year later. I worked blue collar jobs during the day and comedy clubs at night, and I was earning about $25 a year doing stand-up. — Bernie Mac

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. — Ken Jeong

When machines fail, when technology fails, when the conventional religion fails, people have got to have something. Even a zombin lurching through the night can seem pretty cheerful compared to the existential comedy/horror of the ozone layer dissolving under the combined assult of a million flurocarbon spray cans of deoderant. - The Mist — Stephen King

Oh, well, I know that Libby." He rolls his eyes. "I've never met anyone more committed to, well, life that you are."
"Really?" I swallow rather hard. "Even though I keep on screwing my life up?"
"Sweetheart, precisely because you keep screwing your life up! I mean look at you. You had the crappiest career eve in the world before you turned everything around and became this shit-hot jewellery designer. You set your head on fire with a cigarette and ended up being utterly adored by the guy who had to put you out... And I do adore you, by the way," he adds, in a nonchalant sort of way, "in case you ever had wondered. Oh, and then there's your love of life. Loads of girls would have just sunk... — Lucy Holliday

Only in California could the night air be lit not by fireflies, but radioactive porn star cumshots. — C.Z. Hazard

[on Purgatory] It is, of course, open to anyone to say that the whole idea is morbid and exaggerated
open even to those who think nothing of queuing for twenty-four hours in acute discomfort to see the first night of a musical comedy, which lasts three hours at most, which they are not sure of liking when they get there, and which they could see any other night with no trouble at all. — Dorothy L. Sayers

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've been driving in the city for years because, as a stand-up in N.Y.C., you can perform at more comedy clubs a night if you have a car. Getting from club to club by subway is too slow at night and too expensive by cab. So, many comics live far out from Manhattan and drive in every night. — Judah Friedlander

The issue of the mysterious power of transmission arises here. What do you transmit to your child? Blonde hair, blue eyes, very small feet? But also a taste for cigarettes, panettone, boys with guitars? Is this foetus's life destined to be filled with suitcases packed in the middle of the night, suitcases that will always return to their point of departure some weeks later?

In other words, is this foetus destined to relive, again and again, emotions encoded in a fossilized region of its brain and thus, almost simultaneously, experience love and the end of the world, hope and lightning, a romantic comedy and a horror film? — Monica Sabolo

To create a comedy major, I ended up starting a comedy night in the basement of my dorm, and I promoted and produced my final project, which meant I faxed press releases from an old Apple IIC, or whatever it was, to newspapers, not knowing if that would work or if that's how you do things. — Eugene Mirman

She drew in a breath. "So I have
this thing I do before sex. A test. An 'Is He Inhaler Worthy?'
test."
He just stared at her. "There's a test. Before sex."
"Yes. And I should tell you, not many pass."


"Chloe?"
"Yeah?"
"I'd be worth the inhaler," he said, then forced himself to walk away into the night. — Jill Shalvis

He cocked his head and sent her a dimpled smile. "Where are you going in such a hurry?"
Where am I going? "I don't know. Probably the library."
"On a Friday night?" He made a show of horror. "What the heck are you going to do there?"
"Oh, what most people do at their local library - three way orgy, summon up the dead, if there's time, jam up the copy machine with Canadian quarters. Same old same old. — Jennifer Shirk

There's a fraudulent root element of comedy in that we say things night after night as though they are rolling effortlessly from the brain and off the tongue, when in fact they are crafted over weeks and months and years. — Doug Stanhope

Is there any I could get a glass of water?
[waiter]There is no way ... I toss and turn many a night trying to think up some way some how I could get glasses of water to costomers but I keep coming up empty ... Legend has it there was a waiter here many years ago ... who had figured out a way to do just that but he is long gone and with him the secret. It had something to do with a glass rack and a faucet but no one has been able to put the pieces together so I must say no there is no way. HOW I WISH THERE WAS A WAY!!! — Brian Regan

In the blackness of the midnight sleep world, immunized from the harsh glare of daytime reality, the active imagination of the soul dances in the mind of a dream weaver. Safely shrouded in the all-encompassing blanket of darkness supplied by nighttime sleep, our secret wishes speak to us by channeling the collective mythology of the primordial mind. During the wee hours of night, right before first light, we summon our personal muse to tell us in operatic fashion what it means to be human. If we listen carefully, our muse's heart songs shares with us what it means to experience both the tragedy and comedy of life, and encourages us to unreservedly embrace in a moral manner the banality, brutality, beauty, and splendor of nature that occurs eternally in the cosmic world that swaddles us. — Kilroy J. Oldster

I was voted Most Humorous in my senior class in high school, and I was a fan of comedy, my whole life. I never got into the horror genre, and action was fine, but I just loved comedy. Any comedy I could get my hands on, I would. I watched Saturday Night Live religiously. I've just been a fan of comedy, my whole life. — Rob Riggle

It's depressing sitting at a comedy club all night, waiting to get on to do your five or ten minutes of material. — Sandra Bernhard

I was very young, and I kind of decided I wanted to do comedy. My parents were musicians, so we traveled on a tour bus. You're in a different town every night; as a kid, you're trying to make friends fast. You try to be funny. — Trevor Moore

I feel like you've gotta be able to get up every night in front of a live audience. Whether it's 10 people or 50 people or a hundred people, whether you're in a rock band or doing the comedy circuit. — Sandra Bernhard

I grew up in repertory theaters, so it was comedy one night, drama the next. I'm used to going from one to the other. And I worked for years in television as well. So, I like the interrelationship of it and having a good relationship with a group of artists creating something really where the sum is greater than all of our individual contributions, our parts. — Howard Shore

I've done some really weird gigs. The ones where no one turned up - they're probably not the interesting ones to talk about. I played some pretty random ones in L.A. I signed to play all-R&B nights or an all-comedy night where I'd be the only white person there. They were fun. — Ed Sheeran

The girls that I grew up with, and my friends and I, we just never had interests in common. I loved comedy. I loved Saturday Night Live, Gilda Radner, Lucille Ball, and Goldie Hawn movies. I just wanted to laugh. I liked women in comedy, and I liked male comics as I got a little older. My interests just never matched up with other girls'. — Amy Schumer

The way I view comedy clubs is, people are drinking, they're ordering food, they're out for the night, and there's also a person onstage talking. And with the theater, they came to the theater, and they're waiting to hear what you say. So you'd better have something to say. — Mike Birbiglia

That night's show was watched by ten million people, so I guess that director at The Second City who said the audience "didn't want to see a sketch with two women" can go shit in his hat. — Tina Fey

You know you're a hot mess when the only person buying you drinks all night is yourself. — Chelsea Handler

I love sketch comedy. My real goal is to do something with Albert Brooks. That would be my fantasy. I stay up night and day thinking up stuff he might find funny. — Illeana Douglas

Even a zombie lurching through the night can seem pretty cheerful compared to the existential comedy/horror of the ozone layer dissolving under the combined assault of a million fluorocarbon spray cans of deodorant. — Stephen King

When we developed the 'Seinfeld' show, we took a bet on Jerry Seinfeld, who was not a household name. But Jerry had a voice. He was appearing on 'Late Night', on 'The Tonight Show', had some commercials out there, his voice of observational comedy, looking at the world around him, that voice was really starting to come into its own. — Warren Littlefield

Support your partner in their interests. You never know when batting practice, kung fu movie moves, or even a poker night might come in handy during a zombie infestation. — Jesse Petersen

I did auditions at a club called the Comedy Connection. They wanted nothing to do with me. But one night they were doing a night of all women comics, and they invited me to do that. — Paula Poundstone

When I hit Hollywood, it was full-blown. I was a party boy. It amazes me that I made it ... to be able to have led this amazing career when I was out every night. Every once in a while I'll see old reruns of myself and I see I'm giving it my comedy best, but with dead eyes - no sparkle. I was in the middle of all that abuse. But now I'm a recovering alcoholic with many years of sobriety. — Leslie Jordan

'Saturday Night Live' will always be this amazing, powerful behemoth, but it's also not the only thing happening in comedy anymore. — Jenny Slate

I've wanted to be an actor since I was eight years old and I did TV commercials when I was a kid. When I was eleven Saturday Night Live came on and I thought, "Oh God, I'd love to do that." I saw the Pink Panther movies and thought, "God, I'd love to have a comedy series; I'd love to have a character I'd created that becomes a series." I've now pretty-much done everything I've wanted to do since I was eight years old and it's a wonderful feeling, I've got to say. — Mike Myers

It always pisses me off when I'm calling in to some Morning Zoo radio show to promote God-only-knows what - probably this book, so get ready, I'm comin' - when the DJ actually tries to convince me that there are as many female comics as male ones. Cue hypermasculine Morning Zoo Hacky McGee voice: "So Kath, I don't know what you chicks are always complaining about." To which I respond: "Really? Why don't you call your local comedy club and ask for the Saturday night lineup? I guarantee you the male to female ratio is going to be about nine to one. You dick-wad. — Kathy Griffin

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

Every night was improv. — Kliph Nesteroff

They have what you call a black night where they have black people come in for just one night only to watch comedy, and you get all your local drug dealers, thugs, prostitutes, all of them come in, sit down, and listen to you tell jokes. They the hardest people to make laugh. — Mike Epps

I was, and am, a frustrated filmmaker and film student, and my passion and love for movies was so broad that, in the earlier part of my career, I stumbled into doing 'Sports Night' and was a comedy director. — Alex Graves

I was the only "girl writer," probably because the power to make people laugh is also a power, so women have been kept out of comedy. Polls show that what women fear most from men is violence, and what men fear most from women is ridicule. Later, when Tina Fey was head writer and star of Saturday Night Live, she could still say, "Only in comedy does an obedient white girl from the suburbs count as diversity. — Gloria Steinem

The second disk was taped at our all-night anniversary show. And some of those sets are taped at like 4:30 or 5 in the morning, when people are a little groggy and not doing what they would do if they knew it was being recorded. That said, that disk has an entirely different flavor. It's more experimental. It has more of the newcomers on it. It has people doing stuff that you won't see on Comedy Central or HBO specials. — B. J. Porter

To order a wife by mail seemed strange to him indeed; so strange he could only open the letters in the confidential cloak of night, undisturbed by even the servants..." Lord Hartford's thoughts at the prospect of reading letters in response to his advertisement for a mail order bride in "To Find a Duchess — Lisa M. Prysock

One night I attended a Laughing Liberally comedy show. There was one funny comedian there - Lee Camp. — Matt Labash

I used to go to the Improvisation Comedy Club every night in Times Square. How I didn't get killed in that area either means that 1) God is watching over me or 2) I am so insignificant to God that he didn't bother having me killed. — Gilbert Gottfried

I first fell in love with comedy when I'd visit my granny as a kid. Trips to her house meant staying up late drinking Coca-Cola and watching 'Saturday Night Live'. — Jessica Williams

The first show that my dad and my mom did together was for, was a comedy series, a short form that went in the middle of late-night news, and then through all of their career, it was always the "Ed Sullivan Show," it was a variety act, my dad was on the "Jimmy Dean Show" for a few years. — Brian Henson

I think the main thing that affected my comedy was that my dad slept in a nightgown for most of my childhood. And it was just very funny every single night and made me realize that laughter is fun and nightgowns are cool. — Jenny Slate

When I was in college, I would go out, and I would go to these open mic nights at Stitches and Nick's Comedy Stop, so I was going to classes during the day, and then at night, I would be signing up on the lists. — Greg Fitzsimmons

I will remember the night I won the New Comedy Awards, as I was young and unformed, so that sticks in the mind. I've also done a fantastic gig at the Royal Albert Hall, which was amazing. Appearing in the Christopher Guest film was also a real highlight, even if I was only in it for a couple of minutes. — Nina Conti

My parents both had a great sense of humor, and always laughed a lot. One night, when they were watching 'Candid Camera,' I finally understood what comedy was all about. I heard the laughter on television, I turned around and saw my parents laughing, and that's when I thought: 'This is great. This is what I can do. I'm gonna prank somebody.' — Howie Mandel

I liked comedy as a kid. When I was a kid, I'd go to sleep to, like, Bill Cosby albums every night. I'd listen to 'Bill Cosby Is A Very Funny Fellow ... Right!' and 'Wonderfulness,' which are two of his most famous albums. Then the next night, I'd flip them over, 'cause it was the old stackable turntable. — Stephen Colbert

The outlandish 2000 election and Bush's victory had come along at the perfect time, helping Stewart, the correspondents, and the writers sharpen The Daily Show's tone of bemused mockery. The next world-changing events would have just as big an effect - and a late-night, basic cable comedy show would become an unlikely outlet for mourning, an antidote to anxiety, and gradually a center of principled, patriotic dissent. — Chris Smith

I'm not a child star, but you could say that I've grown up on TV. I went from being an unknown, down-and-out comic from Brooklyn and the Bronx to being a regular character on a major network comedy called 'Martin.' From there I went on to become the most notable black comic on 'Saturday Night Live' since Eddie Murphy. — Tracy Morgan

You have no idea of the things you do to me. That night, after Fez, I would have happily given you every bit of myself."
I link my fingers between the buttons on his shirt.
He leans back in. "Then why didn't you?"
"Because I don't want you to be the other guy. — Anna Bloom

When 'Malcolm in the Middle' was over, I was looking for a drama more than a comedy ... but if it was a comedy that came up, it would have to be as well-written as 'Malcolm' was, and it would have to be a different kind of character than I played on that show. That's harder to come by. In drama, there were more opportunities, more options for me, and when I read ('Breaking Bad'), it was just, 'Good night, Nurse! I'm going after this sucker!' — Bryan Cranston

Bryce Colton is telling everyone you hooked up after the bonfire Friday night."
"What?" Everyone in the parking lot turned and stared. Okay, maybe I said that a little loud. I hooked my arm through Jane's and steered her toward the sidewalk.
"I went to the bonfire with you. Do you remember seeing me naked with Bryce Colton?"
She pouted and kicked a rock off the sidewalk. "I thought maybe you went back after you dropped me off."
"Why do you sound disappointed?"
"It would be nice if one of us had a sex life."
I laughed so hard I snorted. That's one of the reasons I'm best friends with Jane. I never know what she's going to say. — Chris Cannon

For me, when you are talking about perfect songs, you're talking about Gershwin, 'Someone To Watch Over Me.' Or Larry Hart and Richard Rodgers. Or some of the great Cole Porter songs, whether it's 'Night and Day' or some of the comedy songs. Or Irving Berlin, of course. — Maury Yeston

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

Nihilism in American comedy came along way before 'The Simpsons.' There was a fairly nihilistic point of view to 'Saturday Night Live,' for instance, back in the beginning, and a lot of really dark comedy had a really anti-sentimental take on life. — Matt Groening