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The best part about being a stand-up is the connection with the audience. There's nothing more gratifying then when you can make 300 people applaud and stand up - because that's all you.

Stand-up will always come first. I've been doing it for 22 years, and nothing compares to that connection you have with the audience. It's euphoric.

With stand-up you've just got that one chance. Audiences can be quite fickle.

Stand-up is like a movie every night. You write it, direct it, produce it, the audience votes, and you go home. There's nothing more satisfying.

When you're doing stand-up, you want to stand onstage and, to the extent that you can, uncomplicatedly entertain.

One thing about being a stand-up is it's a one-man show. You gotta do everything. You're the producer, writer, director, and the actor. You just gotta be out there and perform and give your all. It's such an honest form of art that it just taught me so much, and it kind of prepared me for manhood at an early age.

Sometimes when you take strong stands, if you're not called to do it, you're dividing the audience you're trying to reach.

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.

The thing about stand-ups is you can't really get good unless you're failing in front of a large number of people. That makes stand-up comedy unique: you need a tremendous amount of reserve within you to take the rejection from the audience, and without it, you can't do anything.