Quotes on Comedy

An interim government was set up in Afghanistan. It included two women, one of whom was Minister of Women's Affairs. Man, who'd she have to show here ankles to to get that job?

Drama can feel like therapy whereas comedy feels like there's been a pressure and a weight lifted off of you. You come to work and you laugh all day, you go home and you feel light and there's a certain feeling when you're sitting with the audience and they leave after 90 minutes and it's just pure escapism and they're happy.

My school was 90 percent white, but 90 percent of the kids I played with were black. So I got the best of both worlds. I think that is where my comedy developed.

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.

Maybe every other American movie shouldn't be based on a comic book. Other countries will think Americans live in an infantile fantasy land where reality is whatever we say it is and every problem can be solved with violence.

Oh Christ, the exhaustion of not knowing anything. It's so tiring and hard on the nerves. It really takes it out of you, not knowing anything. You're given comedy and miss all the jokes. Every hour you get weaker. Sometimes, as I sit alone in my flat in London and stare at the window, I think how dismal it is, how heavy, to watch the rain and not know why it falls.

Music and comedy are so linked. The rhythm of comedy is con­nected to the rhythm of music. They’re both about creating tension and knowing when to let it go. I’m always surprised when somebody funny is not musical.

People think that my favorite roles to do are villains, but I find comedy to be the most challenging and rewarding.

All of comedy at some level is trial-and-error, whether it's a stand-up trying out jokes or a comedy show trying stories.

Comedy is a reflection. We create nothing. We set no styles, no standards. We're reflections. It's a distorted mirror in the fun house. We watch society. As society behaves, then we have the ability to make fun of it.

My family’s said to me from the beginning, ‘People are always going to tell you to pick what you want to be when you grow up. You take that and throw it out the window, that’s garbage. People are complicated and we love many things and we’re passionate about many things. You can be a human rights activist and also be doing these comedy plays in your community and that’s OK. All those things are a part of who you are and you can love them equally.

When I first started doing my comedy act, I just desperately needed material. So I took literally everything I knew how to do on stage with me, which was juggling, magic and banjo and my little comedy routines. I always felt the audience sorta tolerated the serious musical parts while I was doing my comedy.

I've been doing comedy longer than I haven't been doing comedy, as I was performing for three years before I even got on 'The Tonight Show.' There's truly nothing like it; it's intense and exhilarating, even though it looks so casual.

If someone asked, 'What are your films like?,' the best I can come up with is that they're, like, a fine balance between comedy and drama. And they deal mainly with the clumsiness of humanity.

After the Rodgers and Hammerstein revolution, songs became part of the story, as opposed to just entertainments in between comedy scenes.

That's what's great about standup comedy: the instant feedback. You get up on stage, you tell a joke, if it doesn't work, come back the next day with a better version of it.

The Statue of Liberty is no longer saying, 'Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses.' She's got a baseball bat and yelling, 'You want a piece of me?'

What more ghastly image can be called up than that of a man betrayed by his body who, simply because he did not die in time, lives out the comedy while awaiting the end, face to face with that God he does not adore, serving him as he served life, kneeling before a void and arms outstretched toward a heaven without eloquence that he knows to be also without depth?

The great thing about the comedy world is that everybody is somewhat of an outsider. That's the community where outsiders feel like they're insiders.

You have to get out of your comfort zone in order to grow. And as an actor, you don't become Meryl Streep by doing the same type of comedy. You get there by being challenged. And unfortunately, there's a lack of roles for women of color, so you actually have to be the engineer creating some of those roles.

Sponges grow in the ocean. That just kills me. I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be if that didn't happen.