Quotes About Comedy

There are two types of actors. There's the actors who can acknowledge that they could never do standup comedy. Then there's the pretentious ones, who believe that acting is harder than standup comedy. I definitely don't think it is. I also think making a comedy is substantially harder than making a drama.

Comedy has sort of been my life-long obsession. I literally obsessed over comedy. I really didn't play sports - for me it was just comedy, computers and chess club; those were my big things.

I really like people who can do both drama and comedy and not some like middle of the road do both drama and comedy. I'm not talking about some guy who does these bland dramedies all the time. I'm talking about people that have done heavy drama and who have done heavy comedy.

There wasn't a big tradition of comedy at Dartmouth. More than that, there wasn't really anything artsy going on in Hanover, or even in New Hampshire. The cool thing about the school is that there's nothing for people to watch, so if you were to do a play or a sketch or an improv troupe, it was always packed. There's nowhere else for anyone to go. But there was no comedy.

I like all kinds of comedy. I like comedy that doesn't talk about real beliefs or serious thoughts, but then I also like the stuff that does. I think it just depends. It's a completely personal choice.

W. Kamau Bell is in the vanguard of a new era of American comedy for an unsettling, troubling, and strangely hopeful time. Firmly in the fearless tradition of Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, & Chris Rock. Comedy as common sense purged of the absurd hypocrisy that is Our America.

Katey Sagal, you are an incredible actress. You worked on ‘Married with Children,’ the show that changed comedy, ‘Sons of Anarchy,’ the show that took comedy to a whole new level and ‘8 Simple Rules,’ the show that killed John Ritter.

I've talked to a lot of other women in the field of comedy and none of us feel like being a woman has been a barrier to success in our lives. I can't claim to feel like I've been under some man's thumb in comedy. I've sort of always done my own thing for better or worse, and have been lucky enough to be able to perform ever since. So I'm not surprised by all the articles, but I don't know if it's necessarily true. It's not like we haven't been around.

When you get big special effects pictures, sci-fi and things, there's little or no comedy. Or it's a domestic comedy and there's not one special effect. But very rarely do these things fuse and come out right.

I was in a band and it wasn't working out the way I wanted. Then somehow, little by little, I started doing a couple comedy things. All of a sudden I was being asked to do more and more comedy things. There was this message from the world saying, "Maybe you should go this direction."

At first, there was a separation of clubs and sketch comedy. Now there's all kinds of comedy, making us one big happy family.

At first I had no skills in writing comedy. I didn't know what a joke was, but, as someone once told me, your emotions follow your intent. If you create the intention of starting a comedy act, slowly your mind starts adjusting and you arrive at a new emotional state.

Comedy always pushes some buttons, because it wouldn't be comedy if it didn't.

I am not a politician going around bragging about family values or putting myself on some ridiculous virtuous pedestal. I write comedy. And I am an actor. I am not going to solve the nation's problems. I don't actually spend my life in the way the tabloids like to think I do. I actually spend 95 percent of it writing comedy. Sober. Well, nearly sober anyway.

The arts community still has a long lasting cynicism of the importance, or the artistic value, of comedy. Comedy is just farting about for money.

The timing of comedy is so difficult. You've got to leave room for a laugh, you don't want to kill the laugh, but on film, you can't just suddenly stop for a laugh and then carry on. So, I think it's a real art form, comedy on film.

Between birth and burial, we find ourselves in a comedy of mysteries. If you don't think life is mysterious, if you believe you have it all mapped out, you aren't paying attention or you've anesthetized yourself with booze or drugs, or with a comforting ideology. And if you don't think life's a comedy - well, friend, you might as well hurry along to that burial. The rest of us need people with whom we can laugh. -Odd Thomas -Odd Apocalypse by Dean Koontz pg 30 chapter 4

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.

The object of a comedy is not to correct morals or ridicule the vices of society; no, a comedy should depict the discrepancies between life and purpose, should be the fruit of bitter indignation aroused by the degradation of human dignity, should be sarcasm, and not an epigram, convulsive laughter and not an amused grin, should be written with bile and not diluted salt, in a word, it should embrace life in its highest significance.

I think comedy is an angry art form; it's an outsider art form. Anger and comedy are really connected. If I'm angry about something I will try to think about something funny about it to lighten the load of the anger and cope with the anger.

I think there is more comedians now than ever, more venues now than ever. There are stand-ups who live in towns where they don't have many comedy clubs where they are organizing more comedy nights in bars. I just think this is a fantastic time for stand up.

You aim comedy up. If comedy is aimed down, you're a jerk. You laugh at the powerful as a way of bringing them down to your level or bring yourself up to theirs. Donald Trump doesn't actually laugh. I've never seen him do anything other than smirking. He doesn't have a sense of humour. He's just mean.

It's hard to learn about comedy from comedians. Comedy is not something that you necessarily learn or can imitate. You're funny or you're not, and you hope what you're doing is funny.

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!

This is going to sound pretentious, but I like comedy that addresses something I find either worrisome or interesting in my life. I like Louis C.K.'s stuff or Bill Burr's stuff. I feel like there's comedy where someone will think of something that they think will work comedically, and then they reverse engineer that point of view so they can say that funny thing. The comedians I like, it could be an allusion, but it feels like their point of view comes first and then the jokes are a reflection of what they actually believe, or are frightened of, or are curious about, or are interested in.

Good comedy doesn't have to be a comedy idea.

The comedy really comes from how badly you want these characters to succeed and with a comedy that's often hard.

I love physical comedy. Comedy that comes from an emotional place is amazing too and lets me develop in a new way as an actor.

Comedy doesn't really have any meaning without sadness. The most meaningful comedy comes from some really serious pathos.

Comedy has been my way to reconcile with the world. I didn't really set out to do this, but comedy has served as my outlet to address my issues I have with this crazy world.

I took a job in a comedy club - not doing stand-up comedy, because that's my idea of hell, but in the office - and I went traveling.

I'm not playing a comedy. I want to be playing the truth of the moment, and then have the comedy come out.

I don't do comedy so much although I would like to do a comedy.

Big comedy is good, I like things that are big, but good comedy has to be truthful I think and has to reflect some sort of reality.

I like comedy when its mixed with action, it's just so much fun to do comedy with a bit of action, its fun to watch and also so much fun to do.

I actually feel that all drama has an element of comedy in it. A great deal of that I learned from writers like Chekhov who called his plays his comedy even when they touch on tragedy.

If you try to go for a laugh, it's death to the comedy. Personally, that's how I approach comedy. But I'm no expert.

The kinds of shows that seem to work now, the comedy shows, are those which require very little attention. They're superficial and I like articulate comedy. I don't know how to do the other, so I won't consider television until the audience's taste changes.

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 like broad comedy. If I had an idea tomorrow for a film that was all slapstick and broad comedy, and it was an idea that interested me, I would not hesitate to do it because I enjoy watching these kinds of film.

I stopped doing romantic comedies. I just stopped. They're terrible. They're bad. They're not funny and so they shouldn't be a romantic comedy because most of the time they're not romantic. They shouldn't be called romantic comedy.

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.

It always interested me that 'Goodness Gracious Me' and 'The Kumars,' when shown around the world, were referred to as British comedy. It was only here that they were referred to as Asian comedy, even though I always felt it was very British in its humour and structure.

There are a couple of things I want to impart to ladies who want to be in comedy: One, you don’t have to be weird or be quirky to get your job done. And two, comedy skill is not sexually transmittable. You do not have to sleep with a comedian to learn what you’re doing. Male comedians will not like that advice, but it is the truth.

In every case, I find pre-planning noble, but not always that useful in comedy. You know comedy once you're doing it.

I love a lot of comedy movies. I think I fell in love with comedy when I was younger. My brother and I would always sit down and watch some of the classics. Bottle Rocket is one of my favorite comedies.

Comedy can be fun no matter what you're playing small or big comedy part. It always has the potential to be a blast.

I was bad at sports and picked last every day. I couldn't quite figure out what my role was in the social order, so I decided I was interested in comedy. And what was then interesting was, nobody else was interested in it at all. I didn't find one friend who was interested in comedy until I moved to California and met other comedians. And suddenly I knew hundreds of people who knew as much about SCTV as I did. But it took me 20 years to find those people.