Quotes About Comedy

Comedy is an intellectual affair, and deals chiefly with logic. Tragedy is an emotional affair, and deals chiefly with value. Horace Walpole once said that "life is a comedy to the man who thinks and a tragedy to the man who feels." Comedy is negative; it is a criticism of limitations and an unwillingness to accept them. Tragedy is positive; it is an uncritical acceptance of the positive content of that which is delimited. Since comedy deals with the limitations of actual situations and tragedy with their positive content, comedy must ridicule and tragedy must endorse.

I think the best kind of comedy is the least self conscious. I think if you just sort of let the comedy happen without the elbow nudge, did you get it, did you get it. I love straight face comedy or subtle - relatively subtle comedy.

If you're into comedy, you will know what the show is about. We have so many comedy geeks, comedy enthusiasts, fanatical people who go to comedy festivals and follow comedians, and really treat it like rock 'n' roll - which it can be, but more like the geeky rock 'n' roll.

I feel like L.A. is more of a showcase, and Chicago is a pure comedy scene where you're doing comedy for comedy. You're doing comedy actually for the audience that's there.

Comedy is the result of what's happening, not what people are doing. Because if people are doing comedy. It's embarrassing. The individual elements have to be straight-faced, serious, realistic with a firm basis. What makes it comedy is a somewhat shifted way to put it together.

I think art is beautiful. It's decoration and adornment. But art is also a really important vessel for social change, and social change begins with thought. And so if you can find humor in something and take a moment to rethink it, you can take a step back and look at your values from a different angle. I think that's a really important way of carrying on with life. I think the best art for me is funny and the best comedy for me is art. Some of my favorite artists are comedians. Comedy is art, and art can be comedy, and the intersection is vital - at least for my own work.

I had always drawn, every day as long as I had held a pencil, and just assumed everyone else had too…Art had saved me and helped me fit in…Art was always my saving grace…Comedy didn’t come until much later for me. I’ve always tried to combine the two things, art and comedy, and couldn’t make a choice between the two. It was always my ambition to make comedy with an art-school slant, and art that could be funny instead of po-faced.

Because I was familiar with Taika's Watiti work and there's a very subversive, funny streak amongst all of them. I don't think he turned [Hunt for the Wilderpeople] into a sort of drama, there's too much dark material underneath it for it to be a comedy; it wasn't designed to be a comedy. I think it's a comedy... I think it's a drama that's funny; which is different.

I'm very interested in trying to make comedy shows that are a bit bigger, more theatrical, more of a "show." Some people might say I'm trying too hard, but that's a compliment to me. I like to inject a bit of production value and flair to comedy, or at least to my little corner of comedy.

Good comedy helps people know they're not alone. Great comedy provides an answer.

Comedy people are always present because they're always looking for the funniest version of whatever the line is. Sometimes theater people, where scripts are sacrosanct, aren't quite as present in scenes. That's a massive generalization, but in my experience, I find that comedy people are great to improvise with and to do scenes with because they're there.

I think a lot of the instincts you have doing comedy are really the same for doing drama, in that it's essentially about listening. The way I approach comedy, is you have to commit to everything as if it's a dramatic role, meaning you play it straight.

My background is in musical comedy. I didn't know I was going to be an actor. But all my points of reference have to do with musical comedy and in being kind of a showoff.

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.

In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed.

Comedy really is my bread and butter, even when I'm doing a serious character, with the exception of Outcast. I have found very little humor in this character. Most of the time, what I do, somewhere there is comedy in it.

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.

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."

I've never heard of a comedy that hasn't had reshoots, especially for the ending of a movie in a comedy.

When Steampunk meets adventure and adventure meets comedy and comedy meets ingenuity and ingenuity meets charm and charm meets wonder and wonder meets pleasure the result is a Triumph. Dr Grordbort is the future. And the past. Which makes an ideal present.

Anyone can write. But comedy, you've got to do some writing. You get one comedy script to every 20 dramas.

I definitely prefer working in comedy over drama, but at the same time, when it comes to comedy, I tend to prefer comedies that have a great sense of truth to them and that come from an honest place.

I think comedy's just about being interested in comedy and what makes people laugh and experimenting.

I think there's a difference between making comedy and reporting comedy. When you're a joke teller you can easily fall into the second, you can show up and just say the jokes.

I've always been a big fan of comedy and sketch comedy, and I like to laugh, but you can't just be funny. You do have to work at it, and you have to try to know what your role is and when you can insert humor, or when it's best not to.

I have done much more dramatic work than comedic work, but I think comedy is harder than drama in a way. I think it's one of those things that's constantly discussed - people who do comedy think it's harder, people who do drama think it's harder. Usually drama is the one that gets this highbrow respect.

Every time I think about writing, comedy doesn't interest me in the slightest. I can play comedy, but I don't think in terms of comic dialogue.

What 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.

I mean, there's an aspect I've always said that is - it's, you know, it's not poetry but it's kind of like it. It's not song lyrics but it's kind of like song lyrics. It's not rap but it's kind of like rap. And it's not stand-up comedy but it is kind of like stand-up comedy. It's all those things together.

I 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.

I just want to continue to do comedy. Comedy, I'm discovering, is my niche. It's what I'm born to do, so I would love to have my own sitcom one day in the future.

I always wanted to be a comedian. I loved comedy since I was a little kid, and while I was at university I started doing stand up shows. Once I realized that I was good at it I quit college and left although I had six months left. I went to England. I could have done the last six months but I realized that I was better at standup comedy than I was at singing opera.

I 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.

I'm much more a European Italian than I am an American Italian, and I've always felt that that style of acting comedy is in me. I put comedy as much as I can into all my movies, if I can help it.

You've got to realize that when all goes well, and everything is beautiful, you have no comedy. It's when somebody steps on the bride's train, or belches during the ceremony that you've got comedy!

Comedy - and I say this with humility - comedy needs me.

Comedy born of bewilderment is the only comedy that should be in magic.

I have a romantic comedy I'd love to make, but I can't get the money for it. It's hard to get people to give you money for an arty romantic comedy when you've done a horror movie. So I can just sit there and keep complaining about that, or I can go make another horror movie this year. People will get behind me on that, because I'm relatively bankable. As long as I can do my own thing with it, I'll keep doing it.

With a horror movie, you want to know where the engine of the fear is coming from. Like in comedy, you want to know what the engine that's going to make the comedy - where that's coming from.

I also love doing comedy. I just moved to L.A. last July. Before that, Vancouver is all about sci-fi, so I didn't get any comedy, whatsoever. But in L.A., people are like, "You don't look quirky enough," and I'm like, "I'm quirky. I'm the definition of quirky. How do you want me to look quirky." They have these little boxes that they put everyone in, so now I have to try to break the mold and get them to see me as being quirky.

I've always been a fan of comedy, and I understood from a young age that what makes most comedy work is the immediacy of first person experience. I'd spent a lot of time from 1995-1998 focusing almost exclusively on poetry, and it's an incredibly difficult form in which to achieve a sustained comic tone unless you're Alexander Pope.

I've always prided myself on being able to perform in the "alt-comedy" zone, but also being able to do comedy for people who aren't media-saturated, and maybe don't have the latest Dan Deacon album. I probably won't be the most popular guy at Zanies in Nashville, and I'll never be the coolest dude at Largo, but I like that I can swim in both those waters.

There's so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?

Some forms of reality are so horrible we refuse to face them, unless we are trapped into it by comedy. To label any subject unsuitable for comedy is to admit defeat.

I never really thought comedy was a career option, just something I did for fun. Suddenly I realised I was getting paid which was a bonus. I studied for a diploma with the London College of Music, and teaching was something I thought I might do but comedy intervened.

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.

I do a lot of comedy and I like that. I am happy doing funny films. I am often the straight person in a comedy, which is great as long as there are talented people to work with.

We're taking part in a divine comedy and we should realise that the play is always a comedy, in that we're all ultimately ridiculous.