John Oliver Quotes & Sayings (Page 6)

“There are two kinds of hecklers: the destructive and constructive hecklers.”

“You have to do stand-up quite a long time before you learn how to do it well.”

“In improv, the whole thing is that it is a relationship between the two people, as a back and forth. In standup, you don't really want to be listening to what somebody is saying; you want to project your jokes into their face. And that's really not a good instinct with a 'Daily Show' field piece, where it's supposed to be an interview.”

“My family is from Liverpool, so I have some of those vowel sounds, I've got the slack tone of someone from Birmingham, and then I was raised in Bedford, which is just north of London. So my accent, if it's possible, makes even less sense to a Brit than to an American.”

“There are so many low points with stand-up. You are perpetually humiliated, so it doesn't really matter anymore. I don't have any dignity left to lose. An audience can't hurt you anymore when you've been completely dismantled.”

“I've always been interested in socially political, or overtly political, comedy. And I guess I've always liked to channel some kind of personal element to that.”

“If I wanted to take a more activist or journalistic slant in work, I should probably just go be an activist or a journalist. But I'm happy being a comedian.”

“If you work on a comedy show, your basic form of communication is teasing. That's generally how we speak to each other: you communicate the information between the lines of insulting sentences.”

“If you're asking me, would I have voted for Mitt Romney, the answer is absolutely not. Emphatically not. I cannot envision a world in which I would have voted for Mitt Romney unless I sustained a massive concussion.”

“In improv, the whole thing is that it is a relationship between the two people, as a back and forth. In standup, you don't really want to be listening to what somebody is saying; you want to project your jokes into their face.”