Quotes About Humor

You've got to be a really straight man to write a song like 'It's Raining Men.'

A lot of comedies, I think, make the wrong choice of having the straight man being this bland emotional conduit for the audience.

Let's make a law that gay people can have birthdays, but straight people get more cake - you know, to send the right message to kids.

I feel sorry for straight people.

The thing that's worked for me is having as much of a connection to the material as possible. And sometimes the material requires a more straightforward approach, and sometimes it requires a little more silliness, you know?

When I started doing standup when I was 17, I was talking about being Indian and specifically ethnic jokes. Straightforward stuff that was fairly ignorant that I knew would get the laugh. It wasn't flipping stereotypes; it was using them.

I have to have people around who are of a certain strain of humour. I can't deal with people who have no humour.

When you are in a room and your job is to write jokes 10 hours a day, your mind starts going to strange places.

It is a strange enterprise to make respectable people laugh.

I never felt ostracized or made to feel strange by obsessing over 'The Onion' or 'Calvin and Hobbes.' That was considered completely normal.

Some days, I feel like I should win Best Mom of the Day award, and some days, I find myself doing strange things that don't have any real purpose, in faraway corners in my house, and I realize I am literally and deliberately hiding from my children.

What a strange world this would be if we all had the same sense of humor.

You are in a strange world in pantomime, where you are allowed to step out and talk to the audience and do silly gags. Sometimes I feel like a cartoon character.

Strangely enough, I don't mention my sister too much in my columns because she nags me and says, 'Don't make me look foolish. Don't write nonsense about me. Don't make jokes about me.'

Movies are usually difficult, often insane, constantly challenging and always strangely amusing to make.

Anytime you see a bit where some stranger does something to me, it's me.

Many of the stranger but most frequently quoted scenes in 'Billy Madison' were unplanned.

Being a stand-up is my mission in life; it's my passion. My ongoing goal is to simply be funny, on my own, in front of a roomful of strangers.

Trying to make strangers laugh is crazy and more than a little narcissistic.

I don't accept gifts from perfect strangers - but then, nobody's perfect.

I started standup at age nineteen. I decided that the only way I was going to try show business as a career was if I could make total strangers laugh.

When you're talking about a really horrible personal thing that happened to you... and it doesn't get laughs... I feel really exposed and like I've overshared with some strangers.

The Queen is distant towards strangers. But with friends and family she can be very funny.

People often tell me that they have no idea how I can do standup. The idea of trying to make a large group of strangers laugh is, for many, absolutely petrifying - and it is - but there are ways of gradually developing the material that can ease the fear.