Time & Perspective Quote by Ana Gasteyer

Tenacity is the unglamorous engine behind “overnight success,” and Ana Gasteyer doesn’t pretend otherwise. “Be tenacious” lands like a backstage note passed between performers: the work is repetitive, the feedback is public, and the gatekeepers are fickle. In comedy especially, talent isn’t the scarce resource; stamina is. The line reads as practical advice, but it’s also a corrective to the myth that charisma alone carries a career.

“Get as much stage time as possible” is the real thesis, because it reframes comedy as an embodied craft rather than a set of clever ideas. Stage time is where timing gets calibrated, where a joke’s “funny” becomes measurable, where silence teaches more than applause. Gasteyer’s subtext is that you can’t think your way into being ready; you have to be seen failing, then adjusting, then failing better. It’s a call to embrace exposure as a training regimen.

The context matters: Gasteyer comes out of a world (improv, sketch, SNL) built on reps. Those institutions reward people who can deliver live, under pressure, on command. Her advice is also quietly political in the way many industry tips are: it assumes you can access rooms, find mics, get booked, take the risk of bombing. So “tenacious” doubles as survival counsel for a business that doesn’t reliably invite you in. The wit here is in its bluntness: the secret is not a secret, it’s showing up again.