Comedy Quotes

Feature-length film comedy is harder to pull off than the episodic sitcom - it doesn't have the same factory machinery up and running, teams of writers putting familiar characters through permutations - but that doesn't explain the widening quality gap that makes movie humor look like a genetic defective.

~ James Wolcott

I've worked a lot in comedy. As much as I love playing dramatic roles, it's always nice to be able to have some humor around when working.

~ Tom Ellis

I came into the 'Comedy Bang! Bang!' TV show with a level of confidence that I don't think I would've had if I hadn't been doing the podcast for three years already. I certainly had to figure out in those three years the sense of humor I wanted to do and the way to talk to celebrities without being incredibly intimidated by them.

~ Scott Aukerman

Comedy, we may say, is society protecting itself - with a smile.

~ J. B. Priestley

I think in life, the sense of humor and comedy always exists.

~ Mike Epps

When I did 'Sex and the City,' it was like, 'Let's do a comedy where the humor is not coming from innuendo but from the a truthful place. This is a show where we're going to be able to say and do what we want.'

~ Darren Star

I don't really dissect comedy. Nothing kills off humor more than overanalyzing it.

~ David Steinberg

Comedy is still alive, and there are still funny people. Jews are still overrepresented in comedy and psychiatry and underrepresented in the priesthood. That immigrant Jewish humor is still with us.

~ Robert Klein

So my humor, I'd say, comes from a mixture of lowbrow comedy shows and highbrow theater. It's an interesting mix.

~ Jasper Fforde

Although humor is present in every one of my films, it has always been used as a way to make the darker, heavier stuff in my stories more palatable. I never set out to make 'Humpday' a comedy.

~ Lynn Shelton

I'm interested not just in projects that I'll be starring in, but producing film and TV that's really quality and great for adults; and when I say 'great for adults,' it doesn't mean without humor, because I'm also interested in doing comedy.

~ Lance Reddick

Comedy was my sport. It taught me how to roll with the punches. Failure is the exact same as success when it comes to comedy because it just keeps coming. It never stops.

~ Emma Stone

I didn't know I was cool, but I was very flattered that some of the younger comedy writers came up to talk to me at the Emmys. I found that gratifying.

~ Bob Newhart

I'm afraid one thing - I don't like heights. Heights bug me out. I'm not cool with heights. I refuse to do a comedy show 12 stories up. I'm fearless about everything else.

~ J. B. Smoove

My brothers were funny, and there was a lot of shtick and comedy and nastiness and violence and fighting and sports.

~ Alec Baldwin

Breaking records is not something you expect to be doing. That's like a sports thing, it's not usually a comedy and writing thing.

~ Louis C. K.

I was definitely not the kid that just wanted to be famous for no reason whatsoever and then happened to find comedy. Fame and all that stuff have always been slightly terrifying to me, and it makes me very anxious.

~ Bo Burnham

A lot of stand-up comedy guys, when they get a little famous, just give up their stand-up career, and it cancels out the thing that set them apart.

~ Johnny Knoxville

Comedy has to be done en clair. You can't blunt the edge of wit or the point of satire with obscurity. Try to imagine a famous witty saying that is not immediately clear.

~ James Thurber

A talk show is about having a look at a famous face, a bit of stand-up comedy, knockabout stuff - an interview is what Barbara Walters or Connie Chung does in the States, in-depth, done properly.

~ Terry Wogan

If I can make a teacher's salary doing comedy, I think that's better than being a teacher.

~ Dave Chappelle

My whole life, growing up, I always wanted to be in comedy. I never felt comfortable doing the 'teen hunk' thing.

~ Dustin Milligan

If a movie isn't a hit right out of the gate, they drop it. Which means that the whole mainstream Hollywood product has been skewed toward violence and vulgar teen comedy.

~ Roger Ebert

I'd never made a teen comedy in my life.

~ Harvey Weinstein

It takes intelligence to make real comedy, and it takes a reality base to create all that little stuff I like to do that makes you giggle inside.

~ Chris Tucker

Theo does comedy now, and he's traveling around the country doing comedy, and I actually just saw him, he's from Louisiana, and I just saw him when I went home to visit my family in Louisiana. I saw his comedy show and he was brilliant.

~ Trishelle Cannatella

Egyptian comedy has a very, very old tradition. Our theater and our movies are just, like, amazing. And Egypt is kind of like the Hollywood of the Middle East. I mean, we had cinema maybe decades before the other Arab countries ever got independence.

~ Bassem Youssef

Scotland needs comedy more than ever. With the independence debate, finally after 300 years, reaching room temperature.

~ Rory Bremner

I did stand-up comedy for 18 years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four years were spent in wild success. I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a byproduct. The course was more plodding than heroic.

~ Steve Martin

I started doing comedy because that was the only stage that I could find. It was the pure idea of being on stage. That was the only thing that interested me, along with learning the craft and working, and just being in productions with people.

~ Robin Williams

T.J. Miller and Kumail Nanjiani I met when I was in Chicago, learning how to do comedy.

~ Thomas Middleditch

Comedy is tragedy - plus time.

~ Carol Burnett

At once I feel that comedy is this amazing sort of transcendent thing, and I'm also open to the fact that maybe it's just an evolutionary hiccup, something that upright apes do in their free time.

~ Bo Burnham

I don't need therapy. I'm not going to see a therapist comedy acts as my therapy. I put my problems out there. I talk about them. I talk about everything before anybody has a chance.

~ Kevin Hart

Comedy can always be taken the wrong way. If I do a bit that is meant to diffuse racism or sexism, I'm not going to avoid it on the chance that a small portion of the audience might take it the wrong way.

~ Doug Stanhope

Lily Tomlin was one of the early comedy greats who influenced my courage to be the person I am.

~ Tracee Ellis Ross

I've gotten very cynical and kind of anhedonic about all the things I have to do to get to do comedy: all the travel, hotels, and airports.

~ Patton Oswalt

Michael Palin decided to give up on his considerable comedy talents to make those dreadfully tedious travel shows. Have you ever tried to watch one?

~ John Cleese

My siblings and I, we were raised on TV and films. Not a day went by that we weren't watching one of three movies - 'Caddyshack,' 'Animal House,' 'Beverly Hills Cop' - on rotation. Our comedy, our personalities were set watching 'Sesame Street': these really sort of wacky, Jim Henson-y characters.

~ Teddy Sears

The pleasantly crude 'Hall Pass' reminds us of what's been missing from movies: Those squirm-inducing moments in comedy that produce enough discomfort that, at points, what we're watching is half a heartbeat away from a horror film.

~ Elvis Mitchell