Shelley Berman Quotations

I quit smoking well over twenty years ago.

The old problems - love, money, security, status, health, etc. - are still here to plague us or please us.

I am in the Master of Professional Writing program teaching Humor Writing, Literary and Dramatic.

The Steve Allen Sunday night show had the right to two options after my first performance.

As a culture I see us as presently deprived of subtleties. The music is loud, the anger is elevated, sex seems lacking in sweetness and privacy.

As much experience, education and awareness as one can attain is important for a comedian.

While you're improvising, you may come up with something which will break him up. As soon as that smile comes out, you know that, hey, we're having fun.

I am careful with my material and presentation.

I am presently in my thirteenth year of teaching a graduate course at the University of Southern California.

I believe it is important for comedians to know who came before them.

I will always love to perform standup comedy.

My first job was at a Chicago night club called Mr. Kelly's.

The most memorable performance was my appearance in concert in Carnegie Hall. The first standup to do so.

Though it sold very well, I hated The Edge.

Unquestionably, standup comedy is and has always been an art form.

So that this thing that aired in 1963 would result a few years later in personal bankruptcy, would result in having people be on edge with me, wondering when I'm going to blow up.

I was an actor before becoming a comedian.

Incidentally, I'm still looking for acting work, my first love.

Inside was the second LP album of a comedian's performance before an audience.

Outside came in '60. The Edge in '61. All three made Gold, but the biggest seller was Inside.

one of the greatest humorists of the last half-century.

When he was sitting with you, would he be witty? No,

March 3, 1963. On March 4, I was a goner,

We were sitting watching television, had finished a nice dinner, everything was fine. Other people were in serious trouble. Then suddenly, we were moving,

Today's audiences are different only insomuch as today's people are different, and I do not think today's people are substantially different.

While in New York, struggling for a theatrical career, I started writing sketches, free-lance, for the Steve Allen Tonight Show.

Few, very few, will ever be able to craft a joke as beautifully as Pat. He was able to just make it all happen. I don't think he was great at telling them, but he was sure great at putting them down.

But, let's face it, I'm a Chicago boy.

It's great conversation. In the industry, it's great talk,

If I asked for a (stage) light, it was not an ask but a demand. If I demanded, I was having a fit,

How do you tell how a man has been funny? How do you do the sound of his voice? The turn of his face? But I will tell you he was as funny as any man I've ever seen.

If you've never met a student from the University of Chicago, I'll describe him to you. If you give him a glass of water, he says, 'This is a glass of water. But is it a glass of water? And if it is a glass of water, why is it a glass of water?' And eventually he dies of thirst.

A hotel is a place that keeps the manufacturers of 25-watt bulbs in business.

We teach reading, writing and math by [having students do] them. But we teach democracy by lecture.

I developed several comedy phone calls.

I heard the other day of a man who paid a psychologist $50 to cure him of an inferiority complex - and later was fined $25 and costs for talking back to a traffic cop.

The most unusual salesman I ever met is a fellow who made a modest fortune purveying lightning rods. But he suddenly lost interest in his work. He got caught in a storm with a bunch of samples in his arms.

My whole act is confession.