Quotes on Comedy

The best comedy and horror feel like they take place in reality. You have a rule or two you are bending or heightening, but the world around it is real.

To me Psycho was a big comedy. Had to be.

Human life is basically a comedy. Even its tragedies often seem comic to the spectator, and not infrequently they actually have comic touches to the victim. Happiness probably consists largely in the capacity to detect and relish them. A man who can laugh, if only at himself, is never really miserable.

Jack Benny was, without a doubt, the bravest comedian I have ever seen work. He wasn't afraid of silence. He would take as long as it took to tell the story.

When you're in comedy, people always come up and say, 'Oh, it must be so hard.' It really isn't hard unless you're not good at it. If you can do it, its really kind of fun and easy.

You know, crankiness is at the essence of all comedy.

The safest genre is the horror film. But the most unsafe - the most dangerous - is comedy. Because even if your horror film isn't very good, you'll get a few screams and you're okay. With a comedy, if they don't laugh, you're dead.

Molly Shannon and I used to always talk about that we really felt strongly that we were comedic actors, that we weren't comedians. You just played things real and the comedy came out of the context.

Comedy is learning to be funny, and you learn to be funny in small rooms with young audiences.

Comedy is a very rough beat. It's no holds barred, as it should be.

The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending, then having the two as close together as possible.

The trouble with a series as it gets older is it can feel like a tradition, and tradition is the enemy of suspense, and it's the enemy of comedy. It's the enemy of everything, really. So you have to shake it up.

When I was a younger guy doing comedy, it was a big struggle. Promoters canceled me out of clubs left and right when I called somebody a dummy or a yo-yo. Then they realized I was different.

We watch a romantic comedy because we want to cry, say, or an action movie so we can participate in heroics. Horror's different. It can hit you with a moment of revulsion so hard you might want to erase the last five minutes of your life, please.

I'm most proud of the longevity of my marriage, my kids, and my grandchildren. If you don't have that, you really don't have very much.

There are a lot of questions I keep asking myself about why I do comedy. I guess I laugh to keep from crying. And I guess if you ever get me crying, I might not stop. This is the way I look at tragedy or else I'll cry.

I love it if comedy reflects real life because to me it's more reassuring that we'll get through.

Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel.

We want to get people laughing; we don't want to offend anybody.

Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book, and does.

From the first time I saw Sid Caesar be funny I knew that's what I had to do.