Quotes About Comedy

Make it dark, make it grim, make it tough, but then, for the love of God, tell a joke.

More than any other setting - more than battlefields or boardrooms or a spaceship headed for intergalactic travel - I'll put my money on the family to provide an endless source of comedy, tragedy and intrigue.

Diaries of Garry Shandling

Four completely sober men on the set of Pineapple Express.

I just couldn't go back to Suddenly Susan after David Strickland's suicide. I didn't see how we could make the show light and funny any more.

For something to be funny, it has to have an element of truth: lies are not funny. So

Mrs. Woodfield chuckled. "You can't seem to keep your foot out of your mouth, Winston. I do hope your shoe leather is tasty.

If I had the pen of Moliere, I could make him comic. That is the role of art, is it not? To make monsters comic, so we can bear them, and our own cheap griefs into grand tragedy, so that others will weep with us.

you shouldn't give an audience what they want. Give them what you want. Most comics will go down to the audience level to make it work, when in fact what you should be doing is bringing the audience to your level.

When a singer sings, he acts out his feelings. Good comics don't simply tell jokes, they act them out with a very specific emotional attitude. Attitude is the heartbeat of an act. Material cannot be emotionally neutral. Your subject matter has to disgust you, pain you, thrill you, because audiences don't respond to words, they respond to feelings.

Humor is therapeutic. Even if you have no intention of ever getting up on a stage, learning how to turn negative, painful life experiences into comedy routines will give you a new perspective on life. Once you can laugh at something, you can stop crying.

Look for the ridiculous in everything and you find it.

I have no agenda except to be funny. Neither I or the writers profess to offer any worldly wisdom.

Forget Romeo and Juliet. This was much closer to The Taming of the Shrew.

You have to laugh at yourself. I do a lot of humor about all ethnicities that are at the show - Latinos, Asians, Indians... What I say is, 'We're laughing together. I'm laughing with you, not at you.' Never say, 'Oh, I'm better than you.'

I eventually saw the satirical nature of caricaturing individuals.

I like the stage lights to be bright so I can't see people because I will inevitably only see the ones who aren't laughing.

Bad improv happens with people who are inexperienced with each other and don't know the craft that well. But bad stand-up is something that could happen to someone at any level in their career.

Sarah Silverman has always been a huge influence on my comedy.

As a kid, I loved Paula Poundstone and Richard Pryor. But my mother was a huge influence on my comedy.

People always ask about my dad and his comedic influence. It's funny because my mom is really the comedian of our household.

But in terms of satire and comedy, our biggest and earliest influence was Mad magazine.

Usually, comedy shows only influence other comedy shows. 'M*A*S*H' is one of the few comedies that influenced dramatic shows as well.

I was influenced by every comedian I ever saw work. That's the only way you learn how to do it.