Quotes About Comedy

I've got a great sense of humor.

one shindig to the next. I've often wondered how I would have managed if I'd been born with a stammer or chronic shyness. The modern writer has to be able to perform, often to a huge audience. It's almost like being a stand-up comedian except that the questions never change and you always end up telling the same jokes. Whether it's crime in Harrogate

I think Chicago has provided, for quite a long time, a very high level of stand-up comics that make their way out to New York and L.A.

Comedies always need to be provocative and catch your attention in a way that dramas don't have to.

There's a playwright named S.M. Berryman, Sam Berryman, who wrote these kinds of social comedies. They are actually extremely sharp and still quite provocative.

I use humour a lot because humour is a great equaliser. Everyone laughs at the same things if you set them up properly, and that makes everybody equal. At the end of the day, I see my job as being there to entertain as well as inform and provoke.

I read one of the funniest books last week by Don DeLillo. He wrote this book, 'Amazons' many years ago, under the pseudonym Cleo Birdwell. The book is very funny but I also think it's funny that he denies any involvement with it.

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.

If you do a double act for 30 years you kind of get a psychic thing going so you know what the other person's move is and what they're going to say and kind of predict... and you can send psychic messages.

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

I think I'm interested in these kinds of character dramas, psychological dramas, domestic dramas, whatever you want to call them - comedy dramas.

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.

Jokes are very curious things psychologically.

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

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

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.

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?

Doing stand-up is not normal. People fear public speaking above all other things, and I am no different.

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.

The words we use have weight. Whether it's in a conversation with a friend or something said publicly on stage or broadcast. And as performers, we know that because that's why we choose the words we use - that's the whole point of comedy.

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