As they strapped the oxygen mask to my face, I lifted it up and said, 'Don't trim my hair too short in the back.’ It's a cliche, but there's a very thin line between comedy and tragedy. I know that line in my professional life. I'm not so sure I know it in my personal life.
Catalog
Quotes tagged ‘comedy’
Nobody can write better jokes putting me down than me. I know how to destroy myself. I’m good at it.
I never listen to the audiotapes of my shrink sessions because the audience is usually so bad, I can't tell which jokes work and which ones don't.
To be thrown onto the stand-up stage is an experience that you cannot fathom until you're actually there, because there's no place to go, and everyone is looking at you and you can't even see them because of the lights. And yet you have to manage to start talking and be funny on top of it.
Comedy, not screaming at someone, can make someone lift their legs higher. There is a way to do a push-up and a sit-up, and it doesn't have to be so complicated. Everyone is putting a difficult twist to it and making you do way too much.
I sort of think of myself as part priest, part clown. I don’t make anybody say Hail Marys or Our Fathers, but I listen to them and try to give them the best advice that I can.
In high school, I could get beaten up all the time, or I could be something better. I became the court jester.
That's what it's like to be a comedian. You basically stand and stare at the world and hope it craps out cause that's a good year for you. So that's not a pleasant feeling.
For me, comedy and wine are the same thing. My house parties, too. They're all just different tools for bringing people joy.
Can I just put a filter on my whole life
Outsiders develop humor as a defense; why do you think most comedians are gay or Jewish?
Comedy is exaggerated realism. It can be stretched to the almost ludicrous, but it must always be believable.
Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.
Why do they call it rush hour when nothing moves?
Comedy is about observing the hidden truths in life that everyone knows but nobody has ever quite articulated. And standup is about how to articulate that truth in such a way that people feel momentarily unsafe and confused (the setup), and relieved (the punchline).
Well, a wiser fella than myself once said sometimes you eat the bar, and - much obliged - sometimes the bar, well, he eats you.
— Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, The Stranger, Sam Elliott, amazon.com
Been checking Twitter every five minutes, but thank God, so far @realdonaldtrump hasn't mentioned my facelift.
The great thing about comedy is taking people to places that they have fear and foreboding and making them laugh in that place.
I don’t change anything that I wouldn’t want to do or ever done to find an audience; I do what I do, and somewhere in the world, there’s enough people that want to come and fill that venue.
You are in a competition… Every room you’re in, you’re competing with the people that played that room and you have to be at least as good as the other people that played that room.