Quotes About Comedy

I naturally think in terms of comedy whenever I see anything because tragedy is so close to comedy, so I like to add the tragedy to the comedy or a little bit of comedy to the tragedy in order to make them both feel more real to me.

I love good comedy. I don't like bad comedy. Of course, nobody loves bad comedy, but there's a lot of bad comedy out there.

On a practical level, I'm uncomfortable at comedy clubs because there are so many shitty dude comics who have made my life miserable. If I go to a comedy club and I look around, I don't know which of the dudes lining the wall told me that I was too fat to get raped. It makes me nauseous. But that was a couple years ago, and meanwhile, comedy has changed a lot.

I've stopped doing things that aren't clear comedy gigs - to do something that's not "comedy night," it's a difficult thing. People have to be given permission to laugh. You need to know it's comedy; otherwise you might just think I'm a man talking out loud.

British comedy - which has been a big inspiration to me for many years - is very different to Australian comedy and different again to American comedy.

Even the shows or movies that we know are not going to change the world, I love this. I love 'em. I'm a movie fan. I'm a nerd of any kind. I love a big studio comedy as much as I love the teeniest tiniest of indie. I'm not a snob in that way. I really do like a big, big studio comedy.

There's always advantages and disadvantages to doing any role. And there's a great sense of achievement, testosterone, fun, being able to live out your masculinity when you play an action role, or an action-adventure, or a real tough-guy role. Really, if you're doing a comedy, you can sit back and relax. And it's good to know that at the end of the day, you don't have to run off for another two hours and go to the gym, or go spend the rest of the night swordplaying with stunt guys. Then I think, "Oh my God, I love comedy.".

I wasn't even a big comedy nerd. A lot of the comedians I know - a lot of my friends are comedians - they knew a lot about comedy growing up.

The interesting trick of comedy, in a lot of ways, is to have both the comedy and the grounding of the real thing. You get a real sense of a human being.

Nihilism in American comedy came along way before 'The Simpsons.' There was a fairly nihilistic point of view to 'Saturday Night Live,' for instance, back in the beginning, and a lot of really dark comedy had a really anti-sentimental take on life.

As a rule, Germans shouldn't do comedy. Their last box office comedy was Nosferatu.

Comedy and drama are different sides of the same coin. And the thing about comedy and drama is about likability. It's about character first. It's about story. And for me, it's about empathy, and I think the realer someone is, the further you can go either way with them.

Comedy is very interesting because you can very quickly cross into dangerous territory. I mean look at what happened, unfortunately, (in) Paris a couple of weeks ago. They were making comics - which were really satire - but it offended people. I'm not saying the reaction was justified but there's definitely a line when you're doing comedy or satire and how it might affect somebody. That's the thing you have to watch and I think you have to be respectful of it.

I can't imagine a successful comedy movie without a successful comedy performance at the heart of it.

The essence of all jokes, of all comedy, seems to be an honest or well intended halfness; a non performance of that which is pretended to be performed, at the same time that one is giving loud pledges of performance. The balking of the intellect, is comedy and it announces itself in the pleasant spasms we call laughter.

In all honesty, we don't know what's in the hearts of other men. All I know is that I respect comedy and I know comedy. I would never, ever, ever take somebody else's joke.

That's one of the things about comedy that annoys me the most from a comedian perspective. Comedy has gotten so segregated. Now it's like if you don't agree with somebody, you probably aren't going to like their jokes. I think comedians are starting to write for their audience and not towards the country.

Here's a woman, a real pioneer for other women looking for careers in stand-up comedy. And talk about guts - she would come out here and sit in this chair and say some things that were unbelievable - where you would have to swallow pretty hard... but it was hilarious... the force of her comedy was overpowering.

I don't like comedy that I think is bad comedy, where people are trying to be sick for the sake of it, where there's no intellectual point behind it. I like stuff that's got an underlying point of view.

I'm a comedy geek so anything comedy related, whether that's standup shows, improv shows, I'm all over that. That's my favorite way to be entertained always.

I don't necessarily know much about comedy, I don't spend a lot of time watching it. Mainly because all my life for about 50 years I've had comedy.

I'll probably stick to comedy for the time being. I mean, a great piece of work is a great piece of work, and I'm up for good work anytime. But I do love comedy!

[Robert Smigel] is one of the greatest comedy writers in the last 50 years. "TV Funhouse" and Triumph and all those sketches.He's really unique, and he has an amazing comedy mind.

I think people don't understand that comedy is an outlet for me. Comedy allows me to get outside of myself, and exercise this thing that is still kind of scary to me.

Comedy today is not what it was years ago. It's always changing, in particular to female comics. No longer are certain subjects considered to be a male preserve. Women can talk about sexuality and their bodily functions and it can be very, very entertaining. It's changed the impact of comedy acting.

I watch drama. I don't watch a lot of comedy. Watching comedy is like work.

I had always been - everybody kind of likes comedy. I was very interested in comedy, beyond just liking it. I had friends that took apart radios; I wanted to take apart jokes.

With comedy, you get an immediate response. I'm the whole kit and the kaboodle. I am the whole thing and can steer the whole situation how I want to. With film, you are basically in one area. Comedy is straight to it and the film is heavily shaped the camera and editing, so it's different.

Life is funny. Life isn’t categorized into comedy, drama, action, is it?So I don’t know why they try to categorize everything. It drives me crazy-why it would have to be just a romantic comedy or…I want to have a little integrity, a little story, you know

It's funny because I think a lot of it is simply... We've never considered ourselves satirists, but because we're on Comedy Central and because we're South Park on Comedy Central, we can do any topic we want.

Comedy is still alive, and there are still funny people. Jews are still overrepresented in comedy and psychiatry and underrepresented in the priesthood. That immigrant Jewish humor is still with us.

What's great about comedy, obviously, is that you set up a situation that people assume one thing and then you break the assumption. That's basically the backbone to comedy. You set up a situation, let people make an assumption, and then you break the assumption.

My comedy has no color, it's for everybody, black, white, Latino, Asian. It's not a pro-black show, not a def jam show; it's just straight, wholesome type of humor.

The majority of my background is multi-camera format, which is very broad and a very arch perception of reality. Whereas single camera tends to be more truthful and a little more intimate of a medium. Friends was an education in intelligent comedic banter; in intelligent vernacular. It was an education in scene study. It was an education in group dynamic. I came out of there with a masters degree in comedy.

Comedy is a blood sport. It flays the truth and spurts twisted logic. In America, people become comics because we don't have bullfighting.

When death comes too near, comedy and tragedy fall silent.

Comedy is a very lucrative business now, but when everyone first went into it, it didn't make sense from a financial standpoint.

I am a passionate believer that comedy is a way of tackling some of the most dark and difficult aspects of being a human being.

I've never directed before, so I need to make sure that people know that I can. The movie that I've written, 'The Sophisticates,' is a... small ensemble comedy and I hope it's charming and funny.

I don't know what it must be like to be a writer in general, but to be a comedy writer, it's got to be something - it's a very special kind of talent.

I love doing sitcoms. I love doing comedy. I love the whole shooting match.

It doesn't hurt my feeling when I get vilified by fundamentalist religious people. I've actually made comedy out of it. I've made light of that.

When certain people hear "'SNL' comedy," rightfully so, you expect it to be a certain kind of goofiness.

Most people go on living their everyday life: half-frightened, half indifferent, they behold the ghostly tragic-comedy that is being performed on the international stage before the eyes and ears of the world.

William Shakespeare was the most remarkable storyteller that the world has ever known. Homer told of adventure and men at war, Sophocles and Tolstoy told of tragedies and of people in trouble. Terence and Mark Twain told cosmic stories, Dickens told melodramatic ones, Plutarch told histories and Hans Christian Andersen told fairy tales. But Shakespeare told every kind of story – comedy, tragedy, history, melodrama, adventure, love stories and fairy tales – and each of them so well that they have become immortal. In all the world of storytelling he has become the greatest name.

When you only hang out with performers, you start to feel like movies and TV and comedy is everything. Especially being in LA, where it feels like you walk into a coffee shop and you see 15 laptops with screenplays being written.

We are each the star of our own situation comedy, and, with luck, the screwball friend in somebody else's.

I think comedy in the last 5-7 years is as good as it's ever been in America. I like it when people push it. You go through periods where people did not push the envelope. The more you push it, the funnier you get.