Quotes About Humor

I worked at comedy clubs - if I can use the term 'work' - for several years. I middled at one point. I never made it; I was never a headliner. I never made enough time to write enough good material, in my opinion.

Baddiel is a slightly quizzical name - it comes from Latvia but people thought it sounded vaguely Hindustani or something. I thought it might be a good idea to write a body swap movie, like 'Trading Places' or 'Freaky Friday,' about somebody who believes they are one thing but suddenly become another.

Humour is used in struggle and solving difficult things, and I relish that tradition.

There's a long tradition - certainly with country, but in all kinds of genres of music - to have humorous lyrics. Certainly with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention and, if you look at country, Roger Miller and Jim Stafford.

Comedy is my favorite genre. I think it often doesn't get the respect it deserves, and I think one of the reasons is there was a tradition in the past of comedy looking kind of brightly lit and like a sitcom.

I really wasn't raised with much religion. I mean we practice kind of the basic tradition, but for me it was always more of a cultural thing and that's a part of me and my ancestry that I always loved. I mean, I think that a lot of my humor is 'Jewish humor' at its root. And so culturally I love that part of myself.

Baseball may be our national pastime, but the age-old tradition of taking a swing at Congress is a sport with even deeper historical roots in the American experience. Since the founding of our country, citizens from Ben Franklin to David Letterman have made fun of their elected officials.

There's always been this tradition of satirizing these rich groups of people.

I had no interest in sports so I didn't make friends in that traditional way where kids are in public school and they go and they join clubs, and play sports. So I kind of had to find my own way to make friends and get attention and so I just was the class clown.

Every time I've done comedy in, like, traditional comedy clubs, there's always these comedians that do really well with audiences but that the other comedians hate because they're just, you know, doing kind of cheap stuff like dancing around or doing, like, very kind of base sex humor a lot, and stuff like that.

I'll never forget the first time I rode a bike with pedal straps. I stopped at a traffic light and fell over like Arte Johnson in 'Laugh-In.'

I came from a blue-collar family where we busted each other's chops and found the funny in tragedies.

I've done two Shakespeare tragedies, so I'd desperately like to do comedy. It would be nice not to die.

When I think about Plastic Man, he was genuinely the first funny super hero. I'm obviously attracted to that. There's also this great mixture of tragedy in there, too, that I love. The humor comes from a place of pain.

I think that sometimes only comedians can reach the peaks of tragedy.

Laurence Olivier said in an interview once that when he plays a tragedy he always aims for the funny parts, and the other way around. Because in a comedy you look for what's serious. I think that's true. Sometimes things are really funny if you're absolutely earnest. If you're really serious, it's hilarious.

If you stretch tragedy, it will always become comedy.

If you stretch tragedy, it will always become comedy. That's the comedy that I like.

My own inclination is to skew towards humor. They say that some people view life as a comedy, others as a tragedy. Me? Comedy all the way.

There is something irresistibly funny about a funeral. More basically, I think the point is that beyond the deepest tragedy, there is laughter. Even in the midst of tragedy, there is always the possibility for it.

I feel like humor and tragedy are all on the same coin, and it's all a part of the same process as humans as we assimilate reality.

In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed.

Comedy is tragedy that happens to other people.

You never have a comedian who hasn't got a very deep strain of sadness within him or her. Every great clown has been very near to tragedy.