Comedians Quotes

“I like video games, but they're really violent. I'd like to play a video game where you help the people who were shot in all the other games. It'd be called 'Really Busy Hospital.”
― Demetri Martin

“The light. The light is so bright that all that remains is you and the darkness. You can feel the audience breathing. It's like holding a gun or standing on a precipice and knowing you must jump. It feels slow and fast. It's like dying and being born and fucking and crying. It's like falling in love and being utterly alone with God; you taste your own mouth and feel your own skin and I knew I was alive and I knew who I was and that that wasn't who I'd been up till then. I'd been so far away but I knew I was home.”
― Russell Brand, My Booky Wook

“Are we not all actors playing parts in another person's play?”
― Shannon L. Alder

“I hate stand-up comics; I think funny is something you are, not something you desperately try to be in front of a roomful of obnoxious people.”
― Peter Cameron, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You

“Nothing is a joke with me. It just all comes out like one.”
― Lorrie Moore, Like Life

“I don’t think being a comedian gives you any fucking insight into what makes people laugh.”
― craig ferguson

“People who are not blessed with the ability to make others laugh compensate for that by saying (or trying to say) things that are profound.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The Wrong Planet tribe are the pranksters, the court jesters, the comedians, the Bohemians, the flower children, the nomads and vagrants, the free spirits. Without these the world would be full of humans who are little more than robots.”
― Karl Wiggins, Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe

“Comedians are known to commit suicide.”
― Steven Magee

“Sometimes an unhappy comedian spreads joy to the world, makes people burst into laughter because one has to create a paradise of happiness around him in order to hide his own unhappiness!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“A comedian is better than a politician; at least there is no doubt.”
― Bangambiki Habyarimana, The Great Pearl of Wisdom

“Comedians are people who embarrass themselves in style.”
― A.D. Posey

“I made so many B pictures I began to get fan mail from hornets...and for me that was an improvement.”
― Bob Hope, They Got Me Covered

“I was thinking about … how disarming is the ability to make people laugh. It’s a gift, mimicry, but it’s not acting; in a way it’s the opposite of acting, which is why comedians are seldom good actors. There’s an element of exaggeration in the imposture; the copy is the original painted with a broad brush and it can be grotesque, even cruel. But no one is offended. People are drawn to the funnyman who can imitate a politician or a famous actor or an ethnic type, especially his own ethnic type.”
― Valerie Martin, The Confessions of Edward Day

“Some so-called comedians are, not funny, but a joke.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Comedians are people who embarrass themselves in style.”
― Adrienne Posey

“I never really understood why people look to comedians for moral certitude or judge them other than on the humor of their jokes, they are not prophets, despite what some might claim.”
― C.A.A. Savastano

“Being funny really is like a superpower because you can control situations with an offhand comment or wisecrack that kinda just falls from your brainpan without much effort. But like the Spider-Man so often says, with great power comes great responsibility and when you've got this talent that allows you to break down a person or event to their core essence that can make everyone else dissolve into peals of laughter, you carry a huge responsibility. It generally takes burgeoning comedians a while to learn the difference between being funny and just being mean and shitty. There's a learning curve, and it's an important one.”
― Tom Scharpling, It Never Ends: A Memoir with Nice Memories!

“Every sane toddler is an aspiring comedian.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“I'm the Starbucks poster child.”
― Robin Williams

“There isn't a thing I can't do now that I didn't do when I was twenty-one...which gives you an idea of how pathetic I was when I was twenty-one. (That's a lie, but I might as well tell you something right here at the beginning of the book. Anytime I can get a laugh I'm not going to let the truth interfere with it.)”
― George Burns

“Finally, my watchers had to fess up. In embarrassed and genuinely polite tones, they said they had no other choice but to arrest me. Then they accompanied me to the prison across the way. As I entered, an extremely tall SS man leapt in front of me and asked: “Do you have any weapons?” “Why?” I responded. “Do I need any?”
― Rudolph Herzog, Dead Funny: Humor in Hitler's Germany

“Comrades, we are going to try to cheer you up, and our sense of humor will help us in this endeavor, although the phrase gallows humor has never seemed so logical and appropriate. The external circumstances are exactly in our favor. We need only to take a look at the barbed wire fences, so high and full of electricity. Just like your expectations.
And then there are the watchtowers that monitor our every move. The guards have machine guns. But machine guns won’t intimidate us, comrades. They just have barrels of guns, whereas we are going to have barrels of laughs.
You may be surprised at how upbeat and cheerful we are. Well, comrades, there are goods reasons for this. It’s been a long time since we were in Berlin. But every time we appeared there, we felt very uneasy. We were afraid we’d get sent to the concentration camps. Now that fear is gone. We’re already here.”
― Rudolph Herzog, Dead Funny: Humor in Hitler's Germany

“Everyone who is at all successful in comedy has had a secret comedy dork life in their adolescence. Whether it's sitcoms or stand-ups, wallowing in the muck of comedy and repeating classic routines and jokes through your teenage years is what gives every aspiring comic or comedic actor the seed of their absurdist imagination that later takes flower.”
― Rainn Wilson, The Bassoon King: My Life in Art, Faith, and Idiocy

“Jokes create the air in our lungs. And as long as humans deal with humans, there will forever be something laughable to point out in the room.”
― Karl Kristian Flores, The Goodbye Song

“Philosophers used to speculate about what they called the meaning of life. (That is now the job of mystics and comedians.)”
― Ronald Dworkin

“You guys know each other?” I held my breath, my chest tight. Could this be it? Cover blown so fast?

Ted stared at me. After several moments he said, “Yeah.” Ah, crap. He breathed out a heavy sigh. “We dated for a short time. It, uh, didn’t end well.”

"Didn’t end well?” Bill snorted. “You two went out in a hail of bullets.”
― E. Kirk, Demons in Disguise

“

During the first month the Comedy Act Theatre was open, Damon Wayans and Robert Townsend came in together. Club emcee, Robin Harris brought Damon onstage to do a set, and Damon made the mistake of dissing Harris in his own house, asking the audience, “Doesn’t that guy look like a black, ugly Eddie Murphy?” Harris heard the comment and returned to the stage.

“They played ‘the Dozens’ and Robin destroyed Damon,” says club owner, Michael Williams. “Damon just stepped into something he couldn’t get out of. By the time Robin was finished with him, he was dumbfounded. He didn’t know what to do but stand there, hold the mic, and listen.”

”
― David Peisner, Homey Don't Play That!: The Story of In Living Color and the Black Comedy Revolution

“Richie Tienken, Comic Strip owner and Eddie Murphy’s co-manager at the time, wasn’t that amused by his client’s new friends.
Tienken recalled Keenen and Arsenio, in particular, jostling for Eddie’s affections.
“Keenen and Arsenio didn’t get along,” he says. “It was like watching two broads try to pick up a guy.”
― David Peisner, Homey Don't Play That!: The Story of In Living Color and the Black Comedy Revolution

“Eddie Murphy: Raw (1987) was released in theaters — unheard of for a standup concert film — and grossed over $50M. Behind the scenes there was some grumbling over Keenen’s credits as both a writer and producer. Murphy's then-manager, Richie Tienken, insists Keenen’s work on Raw was negligible.

“Eddie was working on his routine and was having a problem with a line,” says Tienken. “He talked to Keenen about it and Keenen basically said, ‘Well, why don’t you say it this way?’ And it worked. I said to Eddie, ‘That was really nice of Keenen to help you with that.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, he asked me for a co-writing credit.’ I was like, ‘What? It was one fucking line. This guy’s your friend.’ ” Tienken points out that comedians are always helping each other out with bits. He’s worked with comics such as Jerry Seinfeld, Paul Reiser, and Ray Romano. “They all helped each other. They didn’t ask for anything. I think I even went to Keenen and said, ‘You’ve got some pair of fucking balls asking him for that.’ ”

Chris Rock, who was just getting to know Eddie and Keenen around this time, recalled watching Eddie prepare for the shows on his Raw tour, batting around material with friends. Occasionally, Rock and others might help “tag” a joke. “I might have got a line in,” Rock told Marc Maron during a 2011 interview, referring to Raw. “That’s what friends are for, for tags. It’s only when they’re not your friends when they go, ‘I should get a writing credit for that tag.’ ”

Eddie and Keenen had a falling-out over all this, and one person close to the situation at the time says Arsenio Hall called Keenen afterward and said something to the effect of “You’re out and I’m in.” For his part, though, Eddie never publicly complained about Keenen’s contributions — or lack thereof — to Raw.”
― David Peisner, Homey Don't Play That!: The Story of In Living Color and the Black Comedy Revolution