You spend so much time in the world of virtual that the actual – which nothing is more actual than stand-up – it’s a painful experience for the audience, and the comedian a lot of time – we miss that.

Stand-up can take you in so many different places, man. So many doors can be opened up from stand-up comedy, and the first one that was opened up for me was acting.

As a comedian, I found this thing, this profession, that suits my mind and life force. To drop it to do something else? I just don’t get that.

I did stand-up for my grandparents every day when I was, like, eight.

Stand-up is hard. Or to keep it at a certain level is hard: I have no writers but me.

Wandering around the web is like living in a world in which every doorway is actually one of those science fiction devices which deposit you in a completely different part of the world when you walk through them. In fact, it isn’t like it, it is it.

When I do stand-up shows at colleges, girls will talk to me after the show, and that always feels good. I like talking to them.

I was just a young guy who was excited to become a comedian and an actor and I just wanted to get to do what I got to do.

Doing stand-up is like running across a frozen pond with the ice breaking behind you. I love it because it’s dangerous.

I was doing these performance art pop music pieces in the city. And they were a bit on the eccentric side I suppose. So people started to call me Gaga after the Queen song ‚Radio Gaga.‘

A lot of times, you could play me just the laughs from my set, and I could tell you, from the laugh, what the joke was. Because they match.

Having other comedians complimenting my work is the biggest accolade that I can get.

The truth is, I had always wanted to be a comedian, but I really didn’t have that kind of personality, and it’s a terrifying thing to say.

The Four Levels of Comedy: Make your friends laugh, Make strangers laugh, Get paid to make strangers laugh, and Make people talk like you because it’s so much fun.

My name is Adam Sandler. I’m not particularly talented. I’m not particularly good-looking. And yet I’m a multi-millionaire.

I always thought Johnny Carson was just brilliant, and I used to watch him and all the comics that would be on the show every night – and I’d dream about it being me.

Stand-up comedy is mine: it’s my entity; it’s my brand; I own it. I do it when I want to do it.

I’m standing behind a wall of jokes. You don’t know about my personal life, my girlfriends, or what I do when I’m not on the road. There’s this guy, this comedian, and this is how he thinks, but people really don’t know anything about me.

I feel like I have a job to do, like I constantly have to reinvent myself. The more I up the ante for myself, the better it is in the long run. I try to interact with my fans as much as possible. It’s good that the person I’m being onstage isn’t really an act. It’s really me.

I didn’t want to be selling insurance at 40, wondering what would it have been like to do stand-up.

I didn’t tell any of my friends that I wanted to be a comedian, because I was superstitious. I thought if I told people, it wouldn’t happen. So I kept it all in my head for years and years.

The greatest thing about being a comedian is knowing other comedians. And you get to talk to them. Its the most fun.

I couldn’t talk to people face to face, so I got on stage and started screaming and squealing and twitching.

The good thing about having chemistry is, when you get to the improv section of a scene, you’ve got somebody to feed off. It can go on and on and on, and the sky’s the limit.

When I was younger and did a stand-up gig, it would take me two weeks to recover. Sometimes I’d get so panicked that I would stutter.

Comedy’s about opening up and being unique, but to a point where the audience can relate to what you’re saying.

A lot of people think I’m a comedian.

Stand-up is my baby.

Chris Rock does the political thing really well, but that never worked for me.

I never even thought of myself as deadpan until someone wrote an article about me about a year after I was doing comedy. There was a paper called the ‚Boston Phoenix,‘ and someone wrote a description of what I was doing and that’s where I first saw ‚deadpan.‘

I’ve done a great job at being universal in my stand-up, which is why, for ‚Let Me Explain,‘ I toured all over the world. These movies I have coming out – ‚Ride Along,‘ ‚Grudge Match,‘ ‚About Last Night,‘ ‚Think Like a Man Too‘ – are putting me in a position to become universal on an even bigger scale.

If I had never ventured beyond being a stand-up comic, then I would be sitting in my house today working on my Leonardo DiCaprio impression.

Being a stand-up is my mission in life; it’s my passion. My ongoing goal is to simply be funny, on my own, in front of a roomful of strangers.

My goal is to make everyone and anyone a Kevin Hart fan.

Stand-up can take you in so many different places, man. So many doors can be opened up from stand-up comedy, and the first one that was opened up for me was acting. But you can go from acting to being a TV personality to being a radio personality to being a writer to being a producer, to just being a visionary, to voiceover work.

When I was a comic in the 1980s, I was on the road somewhere every day, and I’d get back to the hotel, and it was Carson and Letterman, and I looked forward to that all day.

For me, the way I stay consistent is through stand-up comedy.

When I was on TV in the ’80s, I wasn’t thinking, ‚There’s a 10-year-old kid watching this and in 15 years, he’s gonna be doing stuff that was influenced by me.‘ I was trying to get my five minutes together. So now that those people are comedians and they’re influenced by me – it’s bizarre.

I don’t know who I touch and who I don’t. I work hard trying to make people laugh. I try to do the kind of stuff that made me laugh growing up. I don’t have any secrets. I don’t know the reasons I’ve been so well received.

Well, all comedy starts with anger. You get angry, and its never for a good reason, right? You know its not a good reason. And then you try and work it from there.

When you’re in comedy, people always come up and say, ‚Oh, it must be so hard.‘ It really isn’t hard unless you’re not good at it. If you can do it, its really kind of fun and easy.

I kind of thought that stand-up comedy would suffer from the Internet because people seem to know more about the craft of stand-up than ever before. I thought it would seem trite. Kind of like if you know more about magicians, you wouldn’t love them.

I’ve been doing comedy longer than I haven’t been doing comedy, as I was performing for three years before I even got on ‚The Tonight Show.‘ There’s truly nothing like it; it’s intense and exhilarating, even though it looks so casual.

Take my wife… Please!

I like George Carlin’s jokes. I like his humor. He’s one of my heroes, and I like what he did with talking about everyday things.

My comedy is different every time I do it. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.

I think what made it difficult for people to get, and still makes it difficult for people to get, is the theatrical nature of the work and the fact that, my music doesn’t exist without the performance-art element.

Wrestling was like stand-up comedy for me.

I did stand-up, weird and ignorant stuff about my career – anything for a laugh.

For me, it’s a purity thing about the joke itself. It’s a test of a joke whether or not you do it completely clean and it works. If it does, then that’s a legitimate item you have there. For me, it’s nothing to do with finding those words offensive. It’s just not what I’m in search of. Do it clean, and you are really earning that laugh.

Wrestling was like stand-up comedy for me. Every night I had a live audience of 25,000 people to win over. My goal was never to be the loudest or the craziest. It was to be the most entertaining.

Stand-up is hard.

I’m trying to do what Eddie Murphy did for his generation. You have to show people, ‚I’m different. I’m not just a comedian.‘ I’m trying to become a rock star.

The same thing I did in 2013 is what I’m trying to do in 2014, which is continue to improve, continue to shock people. You know, I have several projects coming up between 2014 and 2015, and hopefully by 2015, I’ll have another hour of stand-up material where I’ll be able to go on the road and tour again.

My act is an exaggeration of a part of me. I’m much more expressive off stage.

I learned from the guys before me – Bill Cosby, Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, Richard Pryor, just to name a few. These are guys that let it all hang out. What they lived is what they took to the stage.

I never thought about what people would say about me. I was just a young guy who was excited to become a comedian and an actor, and I just wanted to get to do what I got to do.

I don’t think comedy will ever die.

At the end of the day, I want to be part of the same conversation as Chris Rock, Eddie Murphy, Dave Chappelle, Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor.