Popular quotes about Comedy! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 65
There's comedy in tragedy, and tragedy in comedy. There's always light and dark in most jobs. Whether it's framed as a comedy, drama or tragedy, you try to mix it up within that. You can work on a comedy and it's not laugh-a-minute off set. You can work on a tragedy that's absolutely hilarious.
Harry TreadawayI mostly, for someone who makes a lot of their living in comedy - and even for someone who doesn't make their living in comedy - I don't watch a lot of comedy.
Maria ThayerMore than just romantic comedy, I like romances: drama romance, romance comedy, comedy romance. I also go to the movies to escape. There are times when you go to learn, when you go to be moved, you go to be transported, and there are really times when you go to escape. And I personally escape more happily into a romance than I do violent movies.
Uma ThurmanI love straight-face comedy or relatively subtle comedy. And then I turn around and I find myself doing very broad comedy but it's all fun and you have to keep your sense of humor and not take yourself seriously.
Betty WhiteStand-up comedy and comedy in general is the ultimate form of free speech, because you get to poke holes in all the pretentious bubbles politicians and pundits and popes and pretenders try to float over our heads.
Denis LearyIn Canadian comedy, you'll almost never see guns. If you bring a gun into a scene, it's like, 'Whoa! Wow, how are we going to deal with that!' Guns in an American comedy are a given. Violence in America is used in a much more cavalier way.
Scott ThompsonIn every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed.
Wislawa SzymborskaI 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.
Maria BamfordComedy is like a very cokey, druggy sugar. You get hits of comedy, and it's very, "More, give me more of that stuff," because serotonin is being released in the brain. So it's basically, everyone becomes serotonin junkies, and we are serotonin dealers. And that's what being a comedian is about.
Eddie IzzardWhen 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.
Mel BrooksAt 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.
Steve MartinBeing onstage is like being rock star. Whereas if you're doing a movie, it's such a confined space. You know, you do a comedy, it's so hard, too, 'cause with a comedy, there's no vocal reaction, there's no energy that you get back that spurs you on to be funnier because everyone has to be quiet.
Matthew LillardI think comedy's just about being interested in comedy and what makes people laugh and experimenting.
Zooey DeschanelComedy can reach many more people than, say, a serious lecture on the topic. And comedy might just be the access point to reach people who want to be entertained and also learn something.
Aasif MandviWe are a nation that has always gone in for the loud laugh, the wow, the yak, the belly laugh, and the dozen other labels for the roll- em-in-the-aisles gagerissimo. This is the kind of laugh that delights actors, directors, and producers, but dismays writers of comedy because it is the laugh that often dies in the lobby. The appreciative smile, the chuckle, the soundless mirth, so important to the success of comedy, cannot be understood unless one sits among the audience and feels the warmth created by the quality of laughter that the audience takes home with it.
James ThurberWhat I've kind of learned about comedy is that when comedy gets too expensive it might not be funny. Sometimes it's good to keep the conditions where you're pressed for time and it's just about getting the work done, as opposed to how much things are we eating on the set.
Jaleel WhiteA formula for comedy is comedy equals tragedy plus time. A difficult or uncomfortable situation takes place, and then you laugh about it later down the road.
Brian ReganI don't really know what 'selling out' is exactly. I would sell out if I could, but nobody's buying it. I would love to go mainstream, but my comedy is too edgy. It's always too dirty. It's always too filthy. I'm dying to sell out. But I love doing comedy, I love touring, and I think I would do everything for free.
Margaret ChoHumor is not funny. Humor is something else. Funny is a joke, sometimes silly. Comedy is deep and connected to tragedy; comedy could be deeper than tragedy, in my view.
Gerald SternIt'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.
Jane LevyI don't have that kind of Southern experience, of the fire-and-brimstone preacher type of thing. Certainly not in my comedy. I come more from the guilt-ridden, neurotic type of [ - ] I have more in common with the Jewish brand of comedy.
Larry WilmoreI think that you take the path of least resistance. And for a lot of people comedy is that path. I mean, even against mainstream, it's easier to sell a comedy than a drama.
Kevin GreviouxI 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.
Eric IdleThe first time I came to the Comedy Festival some nutcase shot a bunch of people in Tasmania. I thought, 'Oh, that's just Tasmania.' The second time I came, some nut shot up Columbine High School. Now I'm here again, and another nut just shot up a high school in Minnesota. If you can't see the connection between me playing the Comedy Festival and mass murder, you're no good at conspiracy theories.
Rich HallI love bad comedy more than I love good comedy, so I love open mics. Or I used to. But the thing that delights me more than anything else in an open-mic performer is when the comic has one joke that requires some kind of prop. But only one. The prop is always produced very awkwardly, and it never, ever pays off. The resulting embarrassment is savory and delicious.
Paul F. TompkinsFor me, comedy and drama are all the same thing. How the comedy ever even started in my life was that moments got uncomfortable and I felt uncertain of what the outcome was going to be, so I found a way to deflect what I was feeling, or what everyone else was feeling, by creating laughter.
Romany MalcoThe work I'm doing on the screen differs from that of anyone else. My comedy is of a peculiar nature...no writers have been developed along the lines of my type of comedy and this is why I sometimes have differences with writers, supervisors and directors alike.
W. C. FieldsOne of the great things with comedy is that there's no such thing as a mediocre comedy; it's either uproarious or crap. That's the problem.
Michael CaineIf 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.
Rachel WeiszIt'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.
Trey ParkerComedy can be fun no matter what you're playing small or big comedy part. It always has the potential to be a blast.
Ty BurrellI 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.
Judd ApatowComedy, not screaming at someone, can make someone lift their legs higher. There is a way to do a push-up and a sit-up, and it doesn't have to be so complicated. Everyone is putting a difficult twist to it and making you do way too much.
Richard SimmonsMichael Jackson wanted to be in Men in Black II. He told me he had seen the first Men in Black in Paris and had stayed behind and sat there and wept. I had to explain to him that it was a comedy.
Barry SonnenfeldI've always read books and loved human behavior since I was ten or twelve years old. Maybe even that's why I wanted to do comedy.
Dane CookI'm at least getting my foot in the door as far as doing straight dramatic parts, which no one would have ever considered me for in the '80s. I never objected to that because I love doing comedy, and I'm not the kind of actor that insists that unless you're doing a serious dramatic role, you're not acting.
Curtis ArmstrongTo me, as a director and an actor, that's the main thing. "What's the heart of this story? What's the humanity of this story? And if the movie doesn't have it, then why am I watching it?" Even if it's a silly comedy, like Superbad or Knocked Up - Judd Apatow, I love, because he's all about heart. The humor comes out of the humanity.
Tim MathesonThe comedy of each age holds up a mirror to the people of that age, a mirror that is unique.
Edith HamiltonI find that working with friends is always the goal, even if its just one person. Because the comedy community is kind of insular, its easy to run into people youve worked with, even if you worked with someone on something for a day, or whatever.
Lizzy CaplanAfter the first few readings in comedy venues I did begin to write for laughs. There's something so gratifying about stimulating laughter.
Aaron BelzThe life of every individual is really always a tragedy, but gone through in detail, it has the character of a comedy.
Arthur Schopenhauer