When comedy is good, it’s jazz. The beats of it, the looseness, the improvisational part, the music-the way you hit the inflection, the high notes of a joke. It’s all melody to me.
BILLY CRYSTALI think when I feel I’m at my best is when I’m on stage, and it’s my version of jazz because it’s just riffing or something.
More Billy Crystal Quotes
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The inspiration was this great group of 40 or 50 relatives, sometimes for Thanksgiving or Passover or something and my brothers would just go up and make them laugh.
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I don’t like heights. This is why I stopped growing at fifth grade.
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You really have to have some muscle to be on the stage in front of the world.
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[I did impressions] of relatives because I heard so many different sounds. My dad was in the music business and of course my uncle was a giant [music producer], but my dad in particular had the house filled with these Dixieland jazz stars.
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I never stopped believing in us and I never felt like I was wanting for anything, except for my father, and that was not going to be. I describe in the book [that] I don’t think I ever felt young again in that way.
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I’d like to think there is a Heaven, and it starts from the happiest day in your life.
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We were in front of a live audience and I would be acting with the man who was playing my lover, and we used those words, and the audience would titter and laugh, and make me uncomfortable doing the scenes. …
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By the time a man is wise enough to watch his step, he’s too old to go anywhere.
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In high school, I was the class comedian as opposed to the class clown. The difference is the class clown is the guy who drops his pants at the football game, the class comedian is the guy who talked him into it.
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That’s why that show, no matter who hosts it, it really should be a fast-thinking comedian who is really quick on their feet that can handle situations that happen, or somebody with that kind of mentality that can capitalize on something.
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At some point I stopped stand-up because I didn’t have something to say on a nightly basis.
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When I’ve gotten criticism, it’s that it’s too long, too soft, didn’t hit the government hard enough. Then when I do hit the government, they go, What’s he doing hitting the government?
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I’m a baby. I sleep like a baby – I’m up every two hours. And I think a lot. I worry a lot. I have great nights of no sleep where ideas come.
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Kids need a happy household. They need to be loved and supported in their dreams. And I don’t think you can make your kids’ dreams your own. They need you to support them in their dreams.
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The Passion of the Christ opened up on Ash Wednesday, had a Good Friday.
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