Comedy Quotes

Saturday Night Live is such a comedy boot camp in a way, because you get to work with so many different people who come in to host the show and you get thrown into so many situations and learn how to think on your feet, so filmmaking actually feels slow, in a good way.

When you are the lead in a romantic comedy, you have to worry about people really liking you.

In my banjo show with the Steep Canyon Rangers, I do do comedy during that show. It'd be absurd just to stand there mute and play 25 banjo songs.

When you're on a movie set and you are hopefully making a comedy, everyone's stifling their laughter. You're looking at the crew guys, hoping someone is making that face like, and not like, this is not working out, man.

Comedy makes the subversion of the existing state of affairs possible.

Plot, rules, nor even poetry, are not half so great beauties in tragedy or comedy as a just imitation of nature, of character, of the passions and their operations in diversified situations.

You know, I've always thought that it would be really funny if somebody made a romantic comedy where absolutely everything went well from beginning to end.

In the West audiences think I am a stereotyped action star, or that I always play hitmen or killers. But in Hong Kong, I did a lot of comedy, many dramatic films, and most of all, romantic roles, lots of love stories. I was like a romance novel hero.

Rhetoric does not get you anywhere, because Hitler and Mussolini are just as good at rhetoric. But if you can bring these people down with comedy, they stand no chance.

When I do comedy, I lose all inhibition and introspection. I no longer care.

I've always been part of comedy. One of the things about our family was that if we were reasonably funny with each other, particularly my two brothers and myself, when my father was upset with something you'd want to make sure in some way you made him laugh. Because when he didn't laugh, you were in trouble!

The thing is, comedy's gone in a weird direction. People are really into ironic comedy and fakeness and cleverness.

The real reason for comedy is to hide the pain.

In Canadian comedy, you'll almost never see guns. If you bring a gun into a scene, it's like, 'Whoa! Wow, how are we going to deal with that!' Guns in an American comedy are a given. Violence in America is used in a much more cavalier way.

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

It seems like when I first started, people got into comedy because they wanted to be good comedians.

I think that you can fall into bad habits with comedy... It's a tightrope to stay true to the character, true to the irony, and allow the irony to happen.

But I find with Francis Bacon, some of the things were in the place, and someone who was connected with these schools of thought, and someone who had a motivation that equals the scope of the comedy and the tragedy in the plays.

People who do comedy are always underrated because they make it look so easy.

With comedy, you really want to work things out beforehand.

I had a flair for comedy and could give a sustained performance.

I think comedy is one of the hardest things to do.

The Internet is a great place to find unconventional comedy that you can't find anywhere else.

The violence or the vaudeville style of comedy is a technique all by itself. You get up there, and you are a comedian, and you're doing one thing. That is, you're going to make the audience laugh.

Creative comedy is like growing geraniums in a mine field.

Comedy covers such a wide range of different styles that I'm not really qualified to talk on all of them any more than anyone else is.

Comedy is surprises, so if you're intending to make somebody laugh and they don't laugh, that's funny.

What you aspire to on a sitcom is the feeling of live comedy.

Improvisation is almost like the retarded cousin in the comedy world. We've been trying forever to get improvisation on TV. It's just like stand-up. It's best when it's just left alone. It doesn't translate always on TV. It's best live.

I remember going to Bob Preston's dressing room because I was losing a laugh - as you do in a long run. He said, 'Give me the script. That's where you're going off the road.' That's comedy. It's never the line itself; it's in the foundation.