“Chihuahua. There’s a waste of dog food. Looks like a dog that is still far away.”

Whatever happens in life can happen on the stage, but as a comedian you should always be clear what your target is. It’s fine to be gratuitously tasteless if that’s what you are intending to do. It’s that old line:

My theory about comedians is that their greatest fear is other people laughing at them. So comedy is an attempt to control and manipulate the thing they find most frightening.

I think a lot of people think that we [comedians] are nerveless people in the theatre, that we don’t feel that kind of terror which traditionally anyone who has to do any public speaking feels. It’s worse for actors, because our livelihood depends on it.

I wanted to be in Jim Carrey comedy movies before I met him. I wanted to be a comedian on Stage 19, yukking it up.

There is no more terrible fate for a comedian than to be taken seriously.

A lot of us [comedians] are drawn to the stage or show business or whatever because we didn’t feel so great about ourselves, and we didn’t know how to do anything about that, so we sought external approval.

When you’re a young comedian the first thing you want to do is get a laugh.

You do not have to sleep with a comedian to learn what you’re doing. Male comedians will not like that advice, but it is the truth.