- As much experience, education and awareness as one can attain is important for a comedian.
- I am in the Master of Professional Writing program teaching Humor Writing, Literary and Dramatic.
- The old problems--love, money, security, status, health, etc.--are still here to plague us or please us.
- I was an actor before becoming a comedian.
- 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.
- I will always love to perform standup comedy.
- I quit smoking well over 20 years ago.
- I believe it is important for comedians to know who came before them.
- I am presently in my 13th year of teaching a graduate course at the University of Southern California.
- I am careful with my material and presentation.
- [referring to his best-selling comedy albums, "Inside Shelley Berman", "Outside Shelley Berman" and "The Edge of Shelley Berman"] "Outside" came in '60. "The Edge" in '61. All three [went] gold, but the biggest seller was "Inside".
- My whole act is confession.
- My first job was at a Chicago nightclub called Mr. Kelly's.
- "Inside" [his album "Inside Shelley Berman"] was the second LP album of a comedian's performance before an audience.
- Incidentally, I'm still looking for acting work, my first love.
- 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.
- Unquestionably, standup comedy is and has always been an art form.
- [referring to his comedy album, "The Edge of Shelley Berman"] Though it sold very well, I hated "The Edge".
- The Steve Allen Sunday-night show had the right to two options after my first performance.
- The most memorable performance was my appearance in concert in Carnegie Hall. The first standup to do so.
- 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.
- [on Bennett Cerf, with whom he worked on What's My Line? (1950)] Bennett Cerf absolutely knew it all. Believe me. He was the smartest, most reasonable, intelligent human being. If you doubt me, ask him.
- [on his appearance in The Mind and the Matter (1961)] I recall we were shooting and [Rod Serling] came to me one day and said, "How are things going?" I told him I loved it and everything [but in the episode] "everybody looks like me in the world and everybody acts like me in the world and it's great and everybody's going to know that and feel it--the only thing is, there are no women who are like me." The next day I was dressed in full drag--and I was a woman. They made me up and I was in an elevator going up the floors and I attack a man who wasn't careful about his hands.
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