Explore Quotes on Comedy

Confident people, who understand comedy, improvise so much better than people who are scared. You can't be scared to improvise. You have to know your character, and then you have to let go.

Humor helps ease the tension of race and the differences in society. If there wasn't comedy I don't know if Obama could have ever become president.

I got written out of 'G.I. Joe' and was like, 'Welp, I'm going to go back to what I do: writing and producing comedy.'

I approach a comedy the same way I do a drama. I try to make it as real as possible.

After 20 years of doing comedy, I find dramatic work more challenging.

Drama is played at the pace of chess... or billiards... or poker. Engrossing? Sure. But comedy is played at the jubilant, high-octane speed of sports like basketball or hockey.

If Shakespeare thought comedy worthwhile, that means the rest of us can take a break from tragedy now and then without betraying our calling, even if the modern professional intellectual, a poseur by nature, has yet to discover this.

In low comedy, a character gets hit in the head, and you don't really believe it. In farce, he's hit in the head, but he must be hit in the head. The character requires it.

Many people mistakenly think of farce as broad low comedy. In fact, it's polished high comedy.

The fact is that most crime novels contain a good many punchlines. They are just rather darker than the ones you might hear in a comedy club.

I moved from acting to stand-up because castings are just about what you look like. It doesn't matter if you can act or not. In comedy, no one cares what you look like.

Whether you do stand-up comedy or write a story, you have a duty to deliver. As a comedian, you walk out on stage, and you have a minute to hook them, or they'll start booing. As a writer, it's very similar. A reader doesn't have time to say, 'I'll give him 50 pages, as it's not very good yet, but I hope it'll get better.'

While the subject matter of my novels could not be further removed from the stuff I used to trot out at the Comedy Store, the delivery of the material employs many of the same techniques.

The only thing darker than 'Overboard' is 'Micki & Maude,' the bigamy comedy from 1984.

In particular, what I loved about 'Creep' and 'The One I Love' was the combination of naturalism, horror, and comedy that felt kind of new and fun.

A lot of people say that comedy doesn't travel well. I found it very accessible.

A comedy that is ironic, sometimes bitter, in some cases even dramatic, tragic: This is what Italian comedy is.

One of the wonderful things about Shakespeare is that he trusted an audience to move quickly with him. One moment tragedy, the next comedy.

I think my strength as a performer is my ability to straddle the fence between comedy and tragedy.

'Friends' is easy to dismiss, but it's really good television - the art with which those actors play with comedy shouldn't be denigrated. And they also know how to play irony, which I think a lot of English actors might find quite difficult.

I learned that comedy is born out of strong characters. I won't begin writing a character until I have a clear take on them.