Quotes About Comedy

What I want to do is to make people laugh so that they'll see things seriously.

I find being funny very hard work. I am always asked about it, and I feel guilty saying that, but it's the truth. I love my work, but it ain't easy.

I have this old-man character named Glary Oldman. His apartment was on fire, but he was stubborn about leaving because he didn't want to leave all his stuff. I have a character called Berle, who lost 19 pounds, and now he's 600 pounds and very happy about it.

I was trying to be a clinical psychologist for years. But I kept getting stuck in comedy.

But once we got on the air, everybody except Morey Amsterdam pretty much stuck to the script.

I was stuck in the benefits of being a known comedian.

I like romantic comedy as a genre, but I think it can get stuck in its ways.

I started 'SNL,' and I became the one who did impressions. I did that, but then I wanted to get an original character on, and that took a long time to get one on that stuck. And then I got Vinny Vedecci on - 'Oh great' - and then it took a couple more seasons to get Greg the Alien on. You have to have some patience.

I'd like to start trying different fields of work. I don't want to be stuck in just comedy, and I'd be interested to try to break into the movie business because it's so much different than television.

I remember doing stand-up at an open mic a long time ago, and the MC was like, 'Who's next?' I said, 'Marietta Sirleaf,' and he was like, 'What?' And I was like, 'Ugh, okay, just Retta.' It stuck with me ever since.

Getting into comedy was difficult for my parents to comprehend. I think now they are really proud I stuck to it.

I don't want to get stuck in romantic comedy.

I can't pretend that I'm a great student of the art of comedy because anybody that becomes philosophical about humour doesn't know what he's talking about.

I was in love with a lot of people, because I was a student of the game of comedy - Carol Burnett, Jack Benny, Red Skelton, Jackie Gleason, Don Rickles, Red Foxx, Moms Mabley - who gets no credit, Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, George Kirby. I loved them all, and I used to just take a page out of all of them.

I was, and am, a frustrated filmmaker and film student, and my passion and love for movies was so broad that, in the earlier part of my career, I stumbled into doing 'Sports Night' and was a comedy director.

My first student film was Orientation, which was basically the set-up for Animal House. There are a couple of scenes that we later borrowed in some form.

I learned physical comedy to a degree that most child actors never will. I really just became a student of it - became obsessed with it, to be quite honest.

I don't think I was funny until college. I lived with some Harvard MD/PhD students - they were so smart, and what I contributed to the house was, I was the funny one.

I find it hilarious that there are academics who try to analyse chemical changes in the brains of students while exposing them to gags.

I actually studied with The Groundlings.

I studied theater in college, and I really wanted to be an actress and play a lot of different roles. Then I made landing on a television comedy my main focus.

Improv is mostly what I've studied.

When I decided I wanted to be an actor in high school, I really went into improv. I took classes at The Groundlings. I studied acting. Did sketch comedy in L.A.

I've studied Charlie Chaplin for years. I've studied Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett, all of them. I don't play around. This is not a game.