Quotes About Humor

Making people laugh is a really fabulous thing because it means you're getting deep inside somebody, into their psyche, and their ability to look at themselves.

Part of doing stand-up is to get things off your chest. It's a bit like being in a psychiatrist's chair - but more enjoyable.

My DVD cellophane was put on by a psychiatrist. It was shrink-wrapped.

There is no fun in psychiatry. If you try to get fun out of it, you pay a considerable price for your unjustifiable optimism.

If I was sugar-free, I'd be psycho.

My wife has a good sense of humor, and instead of calling me psychic with my novels, she simply refers to me as being 'psycho.' That's because multiple things in my books have come true.

The comedians who I admire that are really good, they always take it to a deep psychological place.

I think the only way we can really get you to laugh hard is if we take it to a deep psychological place. It has to resonate with you on a really deep level in order for you to really do that good guffaw.

I just love doing broader work - I always get asked to do fairly heavy-duty, intense dramas and interesting, psychologically intense characters. But you know, it's nice to make people laugh sometimes.

Jokes are very curious things psychologically.

It's always amazed me how little attention philosophers, psychologists, or anyone else actually has paid to humor.

As psychotic as it gets outside, the comic can be more psychotic.

Most comedians are borderline psychotic. It's what makes their work interesting.

I spent the first 10 years of my career playing psychotic Scotsman. I'm still playing psychotic Scotsmen really, they've just become a bit funnier.

Everyone knows the feeling where you're in the pub and you make your mates laugh. It's awesome, you feel like you rock. That's what comedians want with a bit of extra ego.

Some friends think I'm dull now. But I think it's great that I'm no longer trying to make everyone laugh in the pub.

I suppose when I started out I didn't know the kind of comic I wanted to be at all. So in a way, the audience wrote my act. I went in and did stuff that I would have done in the pub, and some of it they liked, and some of it they didn't. And I kept what they laughed at.

The difference between comedians and the general public is that we are meant to be funnier. And when you've got politicians giving material so easy that the general public is doing it, what is the necessity of us anymore?

I know that it's probably not a good idea for a comedian, especially a satirist, to support a public policy group or a politician. This is something I learned only too well years ago when I did a fundraiser for Pol Pot. A few years later I saw 'The Killing Fields,' and I've got to tell you, I just felt like a schmuck.

Grammar schools are public schools without the sodomy.

The moment for me, thinking I might actually want to do comedy professionally, was when I did public speaking at school. I found out I was good at getting up in front of class. In the fifth grade, I did a speech on comedy.

I feel like it's my job to potentially make fun of people publicly, but I do it in a fun manner.

Given the current state of publishing, I think it helps to have a brand name on the cover of your book. Comedians are proven commodities with built-in audiences. They may not have the writing chops of a Dave Eggers, but they're salacious and funny and self-reflective.

In his 30 years of broadcasting and publishing fiction, Garrison Keillor has set the laugh bar pretty high.