Comedy Quotes

If I say a joke and the audience laughs it makes me feel good.

I get so happy when I write a joke. It's a very satisfying, liberating feeling.

I think the most important thing about learning comedy is to start from who you are. If you begin the process by imitating what you perceive to be a comedy rhythm, you will get laughs sooner, but you will not be unique.

You get to play with people's little danger zones.

Comedy is a serious business. A serious business with only one purpose--to make people laugh.

When I look at comedy, it's all self-expression. I apply that same method to my music. I came up listening to N.W.A and Snoop. Like them, it's in me to express how I feel. You might like it or you might not, but I take that stand.

Comedy, I figured, was the thing that came to me the most easily. Playing the trumpet and piano took practice. I thought that was a waste of time. I'd go out on the street corner and be funny. In a minute.

I'm a hard act to follow, because when I'm done, I take the microphone with me.

A comic should suffer as much over a single line as a man with a hernia would in picking up a heavy barbell.

I'd say any good set or any comedy that I've worked on, that's worked, has been comedians pitching ideas back and forth to each other. A lot of like, 'What if you say this? What about this?'

Jamie Kilstein is amazing and I will be spreading the word. He has the spark that energized my conscience. We need more comedians kicking it hard the way he does every night

I had no desire to be a stand-up comic until I decided to do it.

To me, comedy is just twisting reality. It's commenting or observing or twisting life.

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.

The funniest thing about comedy is that you never know why people laugh. I know what makes them laugh but trying to get your hands on the why of it is like trying to pick an eel out of a tub of water.

I started over again with an image: Nothing goes right. Then when The Godfather came out, all I heard was, Show respect. With me, you show respect. So I changed the image to I don't get no respect. I tried it out in Greenwich Village. I remember the first joke I told: Even as a kid, I'd play hide and seek and the other kids wouldn't even look for me. The people laughed. After the show, they started saying to me, Me, too - I don't get no respect. I figured, let's try it again.

What I became a comedian for was to get my art out. To get some of these feelings and things I had on my chest out. I don't care if people believe them, listen to them, change their ways, or think, or any of that kind of crap. I'm interested in showing off. I'm the same kid from sixth grade who stood up and said "watch this."

I was once on a German talk show, and this woman said to me, 'Mr. Williams, why do you think there is not so much comedy in Germany?' And I said, 'Did you ever think you killed all the funny people?'

Comedy isn't necessarily all dialogue. Think of Buster Keaton: the poker face and all this chaos going on all around him. Sometimes it's a question of timing, of the proper rhythm.

There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.

I love to write jokes and that's all I think about.

There are different kinds of humor, some is sarcastic, some introspective. Introspective fit my personality better.

It's hard to be funny when you have to be clean.

Thou shalt not steal-only from other comedians.

People may think I'm trying something new by telling stories, but they're just jokes connected to give the illusion of stories. But really, I just continue using my imagination and creating. That's what I do.

To the audience, it's like I'm changing the subject every five seconds, but to me, my show's almost like a 90-minute song that I know exactly. I wrote every note, and I know exactly where everything is.

Without the laughs, the audience wouldn't be there at all, so in that sense, yes, I am a comedian.

QUINCE Francis Flute, the bellows-mender. FLUTE Here, Peter Quince. QUINCE Flute, you must take Thisby on you. FLUTE What is Thisby? a wandering knight? QUINCE It is the lady that Pyramus must love. FLUTE Nay, faith, let me not play a woman; I have a beard coming.

Comedy has had no history, because it was not at first treated seriously.

I was booked into the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas with three other comedians. We all were using the Riviera in-house shampoo, so we all had equal shine and bounce.

It is hard to find something where you can go off as much as I do in stand-up, but I think stand-up allows me that freedom where you can really go off and have a good time.

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.

There is no credit to being a comedian, when you have the whole Government working for you. All you have to do is report the facts. I dont even have to exaggerate.

The bad thing about being a famous comedian is that every now and then someone approaches me to tell an old joke. Don't tell me jokes - I have that. People also say the weirdest things, sometimes sarcastic things, and even evil things. They like to provoke to get a reaction.

I like to hold the microphone cord like this, I pinch it together, then I let it go, then you hear a whole bunch of jokes at once.

I became a stand-up comedienne because I had a sit-down husband.

Sometimes with a comedy it's just having the instinct of how real you play it and what level you want it.

Now, some people do this for shock value. Shock is just another uptown word for surprise. Granted it has a different quality to it, but a joke is about surprising someone. I'm a great believer in context. You can joke about anything. I do like finding out where the line is drawn, deliberately crossing it and bringing some of them with me across the line, and having them be happy that I did.

I have some speakers up here, thank God, because last night I didn't have them and I was telling jokes and I had no idea which joke I was telling. So I told jokes twice. I even told that one twice.

The only weapon we have is comedy.

Why is Cloud 9 so amazing? What is wrong with Cloud 8? That joke came off the top of my head, and the top of my head ain't funny!

For life is terribly deficient in form. Its catastrophes happen in the wrong way and to the wrong people. There is a grotesque horror about its comedies, and its tragedies seem to culminate in farce.

The true and lasting genius of humour does not drag you thus to boxes labelled 'pathos,' 'humour,' and show you all the mechanism of the inimitable puppets that are going to perform. How I used to laugh at Simon Tapperwit, and the Wellers, and a host more! But I can't do it now somehow; and time, it seems to me, is the true test of humour. It must be antiseptic.

As a comedian, you have to start the show strong and you have to end the show strong. Those are the two key elements. You can't be like pancakes. You're all happy at first, but then by the end, you're sick of 'em.

I found out I had a real love for comedy and comedy writing. The logic was, there weren't too many female comedians, so I thought I might as well try a field that had fewer competitors than the field I was in, which was acting, singing and dancing.

Stand-up is the place where you can do things that you could never do in public.

I paid attention to not being a comedian, and just concentrated on being who I was. That is what you have to do. If you say you are a comedian that has been done before. If you just be who you are then you are unique. Everyone is unique.

I did an event in Washington, and it was like we lifted a sea.Immediately after [9/11], there was a stunned shock - kind of this feeling of "What do we do now?" I started performing, and there was a catharsis in the laughing. People started to be able to laugh again. Laughter can be many things - sometimes a medicine, sometimes a weapon, depending on.

It seems a strange thing, but once I was able to get past that kind of self-image problem, I was able to open up in my comedy work and just go all out, take chances, and have fun with the performance aspect of that.

I don't want to push the envelope. Let the envelope stay in the middle of the table. I'll just make you laugh.

Lenny Bruce genius was the unique ability to investigate hypocrisy and expose social inequities in a street rap that was really a form of poetry.

I'm not someone who gets to play The O2 and places like that, but that's the kind of rock and roll venue. The popularity of stand-up means that some people are getting to play rock star venues.

The first thing any comedian does on getting an unscheduled laugh is to verify the state of his .

The humorous story is American, the comic story is English, the witty story is French. The humorous story depends for its effect upon the manner of the telling;the comic and the witty story upon the matter.

It's very interesting, the joke comes first and then the wording comes within five seconds, maybe ten seconds. My thing is to get the joke across in as few words as possible. However, sometimes a word that's not really needed does help the rhythm of it. It's a gut feeling.

Anything that is not funny at a certain point will be funny.

One can play comedy, two are required for melodrama, but a tragedy demands three.

The first obligation I have is to be funny; it's my first impulse and an instinct. I like being funny and finding the jokes.

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.

Comedy, although it is not one of the fine arts - it's a vulgar art, it's one of the people's arts, it's the spoken word, the writing that goes into it is an art form - it's certainly artistry.