Jo Koy

“HBO was a big thing for stand-up, and when you're a broke kid with absolutely nothing to do on the weekend, there was always video recording your HBO specials. I would just rewind those specials and watch them like they were new again.”

“I got a big Filipino family. That's what I love about being Pinoy: we all gotta surround ourselves with family; we all gotta laugh and do things together. I love it! It's family first.”

“What I enjoy the most about being Filipino is our culture.”

“With the blessing of social media and platforms like Amazon Prime and Netflix, you get this broad audience that I don't think we knew about when we were kids.”

“Just to talk in front of people is scary. And now you gotta learn how to be funny, and now you gotta learn how to make people laugh at what you think is funny. That's not easy.”

“I get involved in the political, but I don't bring it to the stage because that's not my style.”

“Tacoma is actually my hometown, but if you live within 40 minutes of Seattle, you say Seattle.”

“With Comedy Central, they produced it and did everything - I just had to walk up there and tell the jokes - whereas with Netflix, I was heavily, creatively involved, from the logo to the lighting of the room to selecting the venue to selling the tickets and promoting it.”

“I didn't realize how many people watched 'The Tonight Show.'”

“The appearance on 'The Tonight Show' was one thing, but the YouTube afterlife was incredible.”

“Las Vegas gave me my career.”

“I always told myself I'd never be like my mother if I had a kid, but here I am, the same thing. I don't know how this happened. The same type of disciplining, the same kind of forcing him to perform in front of people, not buying him things when I could afford whatever he wanted - it's crazy!”

“Whether it was a shoe store or working the front desk of a hotel, I was always interacting with people. I'd get that look because I'm half-white and half-Filipino. They could tell I was something, but they really couldn't tell what I was.”

“My mom raised us like we were still in the Philippines. She tried to cure everything at home like a real Filipino woman. You had to die to go to the hospital. My mom cured everything with Vicks VapoRub. I should've died nine times when I was a kid!”

“I have so much history with Just For Laughs. My career took off there.”

“The coolest thing for me is that I've been blessed with a nice following. The people that come to see me are fans, and that happens in Vegas, too.”

“I was working at Nordstrom Rack, Borders Books, and I was cleaning yachts on the weekends for private parties and being a busboy. I had to break down the tables and roll the forks up in napkins. And I was still doing standup.”

“The stand-up world is very, very hard. There is a lot of competition, and there are not that many venues, and there are not that many opportunities. You have really got to stand out.”

“It's been really stressful being on the road a lot, especially when you're a dad. You miss your son a lot. But you gotta make it work because you get to live a good life. I have to sacrifice.”

“A lot of people ask why I don't talk about my dad, and I want to, I just don't have that many stories. When he moved out, he moved to a different state, so it was just my mom and I.”