Quotes About Humor

I've still got a bit of angst about campaigning for a particular party. I want to write jokes about whoever I want without toeing a party line.

Whatever is going on in the news and whoever is in the spotlight is up for grabs and fodder for satire.

All my humor is based on destruction and despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I'd be standing in the bread line - right in back of J. Edgar Hoover.

Dramas make me laugh. The other day, I saw 'The Place Beyond the Pines,' and I was giggling the whole time. I laugh when I'm uncomfortable.

I just always loved stand-up. It's like magic. You say something, and a whole room full of people laughs together. Say something else, they laugh again. The fact that people come to see that and participate in that... I don't know, it's just like magic.

I feel lucky that I can have people laugh solidly for a whole hour by just saying what I think and getting paid for it.

I was always making my friends laugh, but I never wanted the attention of the whole classroom.

I'm a big fan of the whole Comic Relief brand.

I don't want to make it a hard, fast rule, but it's surprising how many 'fun for the whole family' acts are real scumbags. The people that confess they're scumbags on stage are generally really great people. They're more honest with the audience with who they are.

Humorous writing is often thought of as substandard in comparison to work with a more dramatic or tragic intent. I don't know what to say to this except that I disagree wholeheartedly.

You got to have a lot of courage. Secondly, whatever it is you're doing, you have to believe in it wholeheartedly. Thirdly, you have to be able to stand up in front of people and know that they'll laugh.

I shoot an arrow into the air, where it lands I do not care: I get my arrows wholesale!

I am a wholesale entertainer.

Milkmen seem so wholesome, and there's no way anybody can be that wholesome.

It's been so long since I've had sex I've forgotten who ties up whom.

I like Jon Stewart. He's not as obnoxious as Dennis Miller, whom I really can't stand.

It's a well-known fact that the TV camera adds 10 pounds. I don't want to say that I've been calling my Jenny Craig consultant a lot, but I'm pretty sure I'm the first spokesperson whom they've considered filing a restraining order against.

I guess when I was a kid I wasn't the type of person playing a lot of pranks. I was the type of person upon whom pranks were pulled.

My own life is wonderful, but if I had to live the life of someone else, I'd gladly choose that of Julia Child or Dr. Seuss: two outrageously original people, each of whom fashioned an idiosyncratic wisdom, passion for life, and sense of humor into an art form that anyone and everyone could savor.

The fictional character with whom I most profoundly identified was Yossarian in Catch-22. Always did, still do.

There's public humor, and there's private humor, and they're all appropriate in their own way, and you shouldn't - just as you wouldn't have a megaphone and say certain things that you would say around your friends - things that are perfectly all right within your close social group with whom you share a certain context.

I have seen and heard comedians who had really funny 'stuff' but yet could not make the people laugh; then, again - I have seen others whose stuff was anything but humorous, and the audience would howl with laughter.

You must realize that honorary degrees are given generally to people whose SAT scores were too low to get them into schools the regular way. As a matter of fact, it was my SAT scores that led me into my present vocation in life, comedy.

Back in the late '90s, I put together a humorous newsmagazine program called 'The Awful Truth' for Bravo. We helped one guy get an organ transplant whose insurance company had refused to pay. I thought, if we could save a guy's life in a 10-minute segment on cable, what could we do if we devoted a whole movie to a whole bunch of people?