Quotes About Humor

It's not like I grew up playing pranks on people, and I was not that girl in school.

I can't do without playing pranks.

I do sometimes find it interesting when I look at a lot of the pranks that are out there, and I see kids doing the exact things that I did in the '90s. Like, I would go out on the street on crutches and fall down, and people would help me. Or I would paint my parents' house plaid; I've seen that replicated.

I pray if I ever find out I have only about three minutes to live it's during a basketball game, because then I'll have, what, 10, 12 years to live?

If you see me in a fight with a bear, pray for the bear.

I'm not proud that, in my time, I've tried to harness the power of prayer to fit into a pair of jeans.

As a comedy writer, I'm always praying for the day I can tell a self-aware/break-the-fourth-wall style of joke.

I thought maybe, just by never preaching, never doing any of that stuff because it doesn't work. By just maybe the power of example and some laughs, maybe somebody might go take a walk.

'Hairspray' maybe did change people's minds, and that's how you get your political enemies to change their minds - by making them laugh and making them look at something in a way they haven't seen it. Not by preaching and cutting them off and being a separatist.

Whenever you try to preach something, people will not accept or invite it into their lives. But if it is said in a light way, people understand it better, and it is as true for films as it is for life.

If I'm doing something on stage, and it evokes an emotion, then I might show that emotion, but I also don't believe in being a preacher. If you have a point, that's a bonus. But the funny has to come first; otherwise, you shouldn't call yourself a comedian.

As a matter of fact is an expression that precedes many an expression that isn't.

Comedians... they're different from actors. There's more ego there. They create the whole thing, I guess, so they're more precious.

By the time I got to the point where I was 'starring' in movies, and I had executives telling me what lines to say, that wasn't for me. I'm really not an actor. I'm a guy who comes out of comedy, and my impetus was always to rewrite the line to make it funnier, not to try to make somebody's precious words work.

That's the thing about 'The Daily Show' - we're doing four shows a week, so we can't be too precious about what's going on.

How precise you need to be when you're in a comedy, and the honesty you need and to have those two things meet up and have the execution just right, I always found very difficult.

Have you ever heard a good joke? If you've ever heard someone just right, with the right pacing, then you're already on the way to poetry. It's about using words in very precise ways and using gesture.

It is really hard to do comedy; it takes a lot of energy and focus. It's rather like music: It's a lot of hitting notes precisely.

Everything is worth precisely as much as a belch, the difference being that a belch is more satisfying.

Comedy is a terrible way to meet women. It's certainly a way to start talking to them, but they always have preconceptions about you.

You know how it is with writing. You just write what you want to write. There's no way to predict what is good or bad. You just do what you think is funny, and either it works or you're finished. It's impossible to predict anything.

In a way, you just can't predict a perfect movie for 'MST3K.'

I have nothing wrong with comics and writers poking fun at the President, as long as it's funny. When it's the same retread jokes with predictable punchlines, that's when it's offensive.

I don't know who the hell Paul Lynde is, or why he's funny, and I prefer it to be a mystery to me.