Quotes about comedy
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“While awaiting sentencing, I decided to give stand-up comedy a shot. The judge had suggested I get my act together, and I took him seriously.”

Tim Allen (1953) American actor, voiceover artist and comedian

Don't Stand Too Close to a Naked Man (1994), p. 80

“To me, comedies are usually the least funny movies. Movies that are actually a comedy are usually not all that funny. To me Goodfellas and Raging Bull are two of the funniest movies I ever saw. [Vulture, 2010]
The Jackass movies are honestly some of the best movies I’ve ever seen. I laugh so hard at them. Those guys are geniuses. If they had grown up with a different group of people, they could’ve been performance artists at Bard College, and people would be writing papers about them.”

Louis C.K. (1967) American comedian and actor

http://pitchfork.com/features/interviews/7926-louis-ck/ (2010)

People, Guy, Rage

“America's first great surrealist artists were named Walt Disney, Max Fleischer, and Tex Avery. Their artistic medium was cartoon animation, though we must remember that cartoons of this era were seen not only by children but by a mixed audience, consisting mainly of adults. These men took — quite literally — the principles of surrealism and turned them into mass entertainment. As Fleischer's scantily clad Betty Boop ran through a phantasmagoric underground landscape to the driving beat of Cab Calloway's "Minnie the Moocher," moviegoers of the Thirties saw surrealist dream-logic unfold more powerfully than in any experimental poem created in Greenwich Village. To this day the greatest moment of North American surrealism is probably Dumbo's drunken nightmare choreographed to the demonic oom-pah-pah of "Pink Elephants on Parade" from Walt Disney's 1941 movie. When the surrealist style was so quickly assimilated into mass-media comedy, what avant-garde poet could consider it sufficiently chic?”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

"James Tate and American Surrealism," BBC Radio 3, published in Denver Quarterly (Fall 1998)
Essays

Men, Children, Dreams, Animals

“I continued for some time longer to ramble with Strauss and other school-fellows, to visit coffee-houses and billiard-rooms, but had a great antipathy to other debaucheries. The company of comedians of Mr. Seiler came just now to Celle, performing comedies and tragedies. This was a new life for me; I became acquainted with each individual of this company; they all were fond of me; the beautiful Madame Koch gave me lessons in dancing, and I suddenly deserted all my former companions, neglecting them to such a degree, that one Mackphail, considering my conduct as an insult to the whole school, sent me a challenge, which ended in ray wounding him in the hand. My father loved me dearly, but did not much inquire into my conduct; he allowed me a great deal of money, but owing to my attachment to Ferry, whose salary was but small, I provided him with money, and having myself an extravagant taste for dress, I was often in great difficulties to pay my bills, of which my father was ignorant, till my creditors became troublesome, and my good father immediately discharged them, after giving me some kind admonition.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

My Life and Confessions, for Philippine, 1786

Love, Life, Money, School

“I did all my real growing up in France, which I was almost not allowed to do at home. They liked my voice, they found me sexy, they didn't know anything about my childhood. In England, you’d come on to a bright cheerful song, do a bit of comedy, finish on a big ballad and wear a sparkly dress. That was about it. Suddenly I saw people like Aznavour and Piaf, songs coming from your heart, your soul, your guts, your sex, whatever, songs about everything, life and death, love and hate, wow! I realised you can use all of you when you perform.”

Petula Clark (1932) British actress and singer

Calgary Herald, 14 Feb 2013

Love, Life, Death, Hate

“Its part of a comedy cultural exchange tour: tonight, I am doing the UK and Jim Davidson is being buggered in Baghdad right now, systematically and without cessation, by United States Troops! Such fun.”

Omid Djalili (1965) Iranian-British stand-up comedian

No Agenda (2007)

Parting

“We are in the world and, before we know where we are, we are on one of the paths which we must traverse in our few score years between birth and death. Moreover, each man's path leads up to the theatre on the one side and down from it on the other. The inexorable manager, Fate, requires that each should go through with his comedy or his drama, if he be judged worthy of a leading part, with his scene or his act in another man's piece, if he be fit only to play the walking gentleman, the dumb footman, or the mechanically trained supernumerary who does duty by turns as soldier, sailor, courtier, husbandman, conspirator or red-capped patriot. A few play well, many play badly, all must appear and the majority are feebly applauded and loudly hissed. He counts himself great who is received with such an uproar of clapping and shout of approval as may drown the voice of the discontented; he is called fortunate who, having missed his cue and broken down in his words, makes his exit in the triumphant train of the greater actor upon whom all eyes are turned; he is deemed happy who, having offended no man, is allowed to depart in peace upon his downward road.”

Francis Marion Crawford (1854–1909) Novelist, short story writer, essayist (1854-1909)

A Cigarette-Maker's Romance (1894)

Death, Fate, Happiness, World

“The musical comedies of the month are She’s a Good Fellow and The Lady in Red, both of which owe their book and lyrics to Anne Caldwell—evidently a native of New York, judged by the casualness with which she rhymes “teacher” and “reach a.””

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Source: Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918–1923 (2014) https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25758762M/Dorothy_Parker_Complete_Broadway_1918-1923, Chapter 2: 1919, p. 82

Books, Music, Teachers

“It was an important moment. The old partners of the spectacle of punishment, the body and the blood, gave way. A new character came of the scene, masked. It was the end of a certain kind of tragedy; comedy began, with shadow play, faceless voices, impalpable entities. The apparatus of punitive justice must now bite into this bodiless reality.”

Michel Foucault book Discipline and Punish

Source: Discipline and Punish (1977), pp. 17

Justice, Way, Reality

“I hate you, I hate you!' cried Madeline, a thing I didn't know anyone ever said except in the second act of a musical comedy.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves

Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves (1963)

Hate, Music

“For me to be at a comedy club and flip out and say this crap, I'm deeply, deeply sorry. … I'm not a racist, that's what's so insane about this!”

Michael Richards (1949) American actor

Appearing on the Late Show with David Letterman (20 November 2006), as quoted in "'Kramer' Apologizes, Says He's Not Racist", CBS News (21 November 2006) http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/20/entertainment/main2201817.shtml

“There are many ways to practice and make art. There are also various ways to express, such as comedy, sculpture, music, painting etc. Dimensions can be immense even in such small spaces as the head of a pin.”

Eugenio Cruz Vargas (1923–2014) Chilean poet and painter

Quote Source: Famous phrase of Eugenio Cruz Vargas http://www.angelred.com/urls/arte.htm| Source: Sky http://viaf.org/viaf/13641853/| Source: From Library of Congress Name Authority File of U.S.A. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n81126660.html|

Art, Music, Way, Painting

“Comedy is filled with surprise, so when I cross a line… I like to find out where the line might be and then cross it deliberately, and then make the audience happy about crossing the line with me.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

The Onion A.V. Club, November 10, 1999 http://www.avclub.com/articles/george-carlin,13629/ Interviews, Print Interviews

Happiness

“Ask yourself: "Do I police what people say for political propriety? … do I scrutinize great literature, music, art, television or comedy for signs of so-called sexism, racism, elitism, homophobia, antisemitism and meanness? Am I incapable of appreciating a superbly written script or book; a sublime painting or symphony; a smart stand-up routine, if only because the material and its creator violate the received laws of political correctness?”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“Joan Rivers – antidote to PC totalitarianism,” http://www.quarterly-review.org/?p=2781 The Quarterly Review, July 11, 2014. 2010s, 2014

People, Books, Law, Art

“I believe in the future a new Dante will write a new Divine Comedy.”

Ba Jin (1904–2005) Chinese novelist

As quoted in "Ba Jin: A Century of Literary Greatness" at the China Internet Information Center (November 2003) http://www.china.org.cn/english/2003/Nov/80700.htm

Future

“It's fascinating to watch a show develop from a script to a 22-minute comedy. I try to learn as much, and ask as many questions, as I can without being annoying.”

Joseph Gordon-Levitt (1981) American actor, director, producer, and writer

The Hollywood Reporter November 7, 1995.

Question, Learning

“I like to take chances, and that's the key to comedy -- dancing like an idiot but doing it with wild abandon.”

Megan Mullally (1958) American actress

Attributed

Chance, Dance

“And thus Christianity is played in “Christendom.” Artists in dramatic costumes make their appearance in artistic buildings— there really is no danger at all, anything but that: the teacher is a royal functionary, steadily promoted, making a career— and how he dramatically plays Christianity, in short, he plays comedy. He lectures about renunciation, but he himself is being steadily promoted; he teaches all that about despising worldly titles and rank, but he himself is making a career.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: 1850s, Attack upon Christendom (1855), p. 121

Teachers, Appearance

“The Mozart Festival Opera's production of Don Giovanni made the three hours fly. The miming between Stefano de Peppo and Vytautas Juozapaitis as Don Giovanni was great physical comedy that had the audience laughing out loud. Juozapaitis possessed the voice, swagger and stage presence to match and dominate Leporello, and his costumes are among the best I've seen. I think Mozart would have approved.”

Vytautas Juozapaitis (1963) Lithuanian opera singer

Christopher Hyde, "Mozart would have approved", Portland Press Herald (March, 2005) http://www.jennykellyproductions.com/prod_mozart_review.htm

Thinking, Flying

“It is advertised as “a seagoin’ comedy,” and anytime they go leaving off the final g that way, you know what to expect. p. 324”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918–1923 (2014) https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25758762M/Dorothy_Parker_Complete_Broadway_1918-1923, Chapter 5: 1922

Way

“My job is jester -- not advocate. I’m on a situation comedy responding to [Josh Radnor’s character] Ted Mosby and his wacky adventures -- that’s my job right now. If people want to comment about where I go to dinner, they are welcome to, but it’s not my job to respond to those statements. The Internet stuff threw me for a loop because I didn’t understand where the vitriol was coming from. I thought I had been representing well, and in turn it seemed like I was quickly condemned to step to the plate, and I was fine with that.”

Neil Patrick Harris (1973) American actor and host

Out Magazine; September 2008.

People, Understanding

“And killing time is perhaps the essence of comedy, just as the essence of tragedy is killing eternity.”

Miguel de Unamuno book San Manuel Bueno, Mártir

San Manuel Bueno, Mártir (1933), Prologue

Time

“The comedy is always the same. In the first act the hero imagines a place where happiness exists. In the second he strives towards that goal. In the third he comes up short or what amounts to the same thing he achieves his goal only to find that happiness lies a little further down the road.”

James Branch Cabell (1879–1958) American author

Horvendile, in The High Place : A Comedy of Disenchantment (1923), Ch. XVI: Some Victims of Flamberge.

Happiness, Imagination

“I don't believe that lack of intelligence and appreciation for lowbrow comedy go hand-in-hand necessarily.”

Jimmy Kimmel (1967) American talk show host and comedian

Associated Press (January 28, 2003) "Jimmy Kimmel is living it up", The Grand Rapids Press, p. B5.

Intelligence

“I enjoyed the comedies with Alec Guinness, and I had a real great time with Peter Ustinov in Hotel Sahara. I found I had the ability to do comedy. My timing was really inborn.”

Yvonne De Carlo (1922–2007) Canadian-American actress, dancer, and singer

"Yvonne De Carlo Reminds The World There Was Life Before Lily Munster" (1987)

Time

“Every time is a time for comedy in a world of tension that would languish without it. But I cannot confine myself to lightness in a period of human life that demands light… We all know that, as the old adage has it, "It is later than you think."…, but I also say occasionally: "It is lighter than you think." In this light let's not look back in anger, or forward in fear, but around in awareness.”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

"Foreword", Lanterns & Lances (1961)
From other writings

Life, World, Fear, Thinking

“I am a guy who talks about bacon and escalators. Stand-up comedy is very much a conversation. It's very personal, stylistically.”

Jim Gaffigan (1966) comedian, actor, author

John Wenzel (October 10, 2008) "Underneath that pasty exterior beats the dark heart of a comic", The Denver Post, p. D-12.

Guy, Personality

“Wild Wild West is a comedy dead zone. You stare in disbelief as scenes flop and die. The movie is all concept and no content; the elaborate special effects are like watching money burn on the screen. You know something has gone wrong when a story is about two heroes in the Old West, and the last shot is of a mechanical spider riding off into the sunset.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/wild-wild-west-1999 of Wild Wild West (30 June 1999) Reviews, One-star reviews

Money, Dead

“Comedy is in act superior to tragedy and humourous reasoning superior to grandiloquent reasoning.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

Attributed by Karl Marx in Comments on the North American Events http://hiaw.org/defcon6/works/1862/10/12.html, Die Presse (12 October 1862)

“In the absence of understanding, that was a good a reason as any for living together and making babies and raising them up and throwing them out of the house and then going through the long slow decline together until one of them died and left the other alone again, understanding as little as ever about what their spouses really wanted, who they really were. Was that tragedy? Or was that comedy? Was there really any difference?”

Orson Scott Card Enchantment

Enchantment (1999)

Understanding, Baby, Housing

“Men and things rise, fall, move away, approach. Everything is a comedy of distances.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Hombres y cosas, suben, bajan, se alejan, se acercan. Todo es una comedia de distancias.
Voces (1943)

Men

“Sitcoms routinely portray women hitting men, almost never portray men hitting women. When he fails to leave, it is not called “Battered Man Syndrome”; it is called comedy.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)

Women, Men

“But you have to recognize the fact that, critically, Jimmy is great at what he does, and I think he's doing some of the best comedy in late night. I'm a very big fan.”

Jimmy Kimmel (1967) American talk show host and comedian

Robert Morton, former executive producer for David Letterman on Late Show (CBS) and Late Night (NBC) — reported in Don Kaplan (September 12, 2006) "It's Good To Be Kimmel - Midnight Turns Into Jimmy's Prime Time", New York Post.
About

Thinking, Night

“Tragedy dramatizes human life as potentiality and fulfillment. Its virtual future, or Destiny, is therefore quite different from that created in comedy. Comic Destiny is Fortune—what the world will bring, and the man will take or miss, encounter or escape; tragic Destiny is what the man brings, and the world will demand of him. That is his Fate.”

Susanne K. Langer (1895–1985) American philosopher

Feeling and Form, ch. 19, Scribner (1953)

Life, Fate, World, Future

“Also, I love my google ads. I have no idea if I make a dime off them, and in fact would pay to have them for what they add to the overall nuklearpower. com experience. Case in point: I just saw an ad for "Rodent Supplies." The obvious question now is, "How do I plug those damn google ad things into Photoshop so I can retire while the comic factory pumps out comedy gold three times a week?"”

Brian Clevinger (1978) writer

http://www.nuklearpower.com/daily.php?date=060523

Love, Idea, Question, Time

“I never worry about people not taking my work seriously as a result of the humor. In the end, the comic’s best trick is the illusion that comedy is effortless. That people imagine what he’s doing is easy is an occupational hazard. Cary Grant never won an Oscar, primarily, I suspect, because he made everything look so effortless. Why reward someone for having fun, for being charming? In "serious" fiction (as in "serious" film) you can feel the weight of the material. You expect to see the effort and the strain of all that heavy lifting, and we reward the effort as much as the success. Comedy is often just as serious, and to ignore that seriousness is misguided, of course, but most writers with comic world views have accustomed themselves to being sold at a discount. Most of us wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Richard Russo (1949) American novelist, short story writer and screenwriter

Interview with Richard Russo, Failbetter.com, Volume II, Issue III, Summer/Fall 2001, September 24, 2009 http://www.failbetter.com/04/Russo.htm,

People, World, Way, Feeling

“Sin and grace, absence and presence, tragedy and comedy, they divide the world between them and where they meet head on, the Gospel happens.”

Frederick Buechner (1926) Poet, novelist, short story writer, theologian

Telling the Truth (1977)

World

“Man, when he realizes that he is an object of comedy, does not laugh.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

El hombre, cuando sabe que es una cosa cómica, no ríe.
Voces (1943)

“People see you one way and think, 'That's not her real thing, she's just putting that on now.' But that is! That's where my creativity really resides. Where it all springs. My characters are really bizarre. They're kind of dark and not really considered great people. It all comes from the same dark place, it's just filtered through comedy.”

Megan Mullally (1958) American actress

Attributed

People, Way, Spring, Thinking

“There have been articles lately asking why the United States is so hated in some parts of the world. As this week's Exhibit A from Hollywood, I offer Zoolander, a comedy about a plot to assassinate the prime minister of Malaysia because of his opposition to child labor. You might want to read that sentence twice. The logic: Child labor is necessary to the economic health of the fashion industry, and so its opponents must be eliminated…if the Malaysians made a comedy about the assassination of the president of the United States because of his opposition to slavery, it would seem approximately as funny to us as Zoolander would seem to them.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/zoolander-2001 of Zoolander (28 September 2001) Reviews, One-star reviews

Hate, Health, World, Fashion

“Maybe Nina wouldn't have died if I hadn't moved in with them and drawn Sheener after me, but I can't feel guilty about that. I tried hard to be a good foster daughter to them, and they were happy with me. What happened was that life dropped a big custard pie on us, and that's not my fault; you can never see the custard pies coming. It's not good slapstick if you see the pie coming."
"Custard pie?" he asked, perplexed. "You see life as a slapstick comedy? Like the Three Stooges?"
"Partly."
"Life is just a joke then?"
"No. Life is serious and a joke at the same time."
"But how can that be?”

Dean Koontz book Lightning

"If you don't know," she said, "maybe I should be the one asking the questions here."
Part I, Chapter 2.10, dialog between 12-year-old Laura Shane and a psychotherapist after the death of her foster mother
Lightning (1988)

Life, Happiness, Feeling, Question

“Imagination over dogma, vulnerability over serenity, aspiration over obligation, comedy over tragedy, hope over experience, prophecy over memory, surprise over repetition, the personal over the impersonal, time over eternity, life over everything.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger book The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound

Source: The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound (2007), p. 237

Life, Hope, Imagination, Memory

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

Jean de La Bruyère (1645–1696) 17th-century French writer and philosopher

La vie est une tragédie pour celui qui sent, et une comédie pour celui qui pense.
As quoted in Selected Thoughts from the French: XV Century-XX Century, with English Translations (1913), pp. 132-133, by James Raymond Solly. This may conceivably be a misattribution, because as yet no definite citation of a specific work by La Bruyère has been located, and the statement is very similar to one known to have been made by Horace Walpole in a letter of 31 December 1769: The world is a comedy to those that think; a tragedy to those that feel.

Life, Feeling, Thinking

“If you want to make an audience laugh, you dress a man up like an old lady and push her down the stairs. If you want to make comedy writers laugh, you push an actual old lady down the stairs.”

Tina Fey (1970) American comedian, writer, producer and actress

On Comedy
Source: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/11/03/anchor-woman

Funny

“I was on this German talk show and this woman said to me, she said, "Mr. Williams, why do you think there's not so much comedy in Germany?" I said, "Did you ever think you killed all the funny people?" [laughter and applause] And…it was…and here's where it got interesting. She didn't bat an eyelash. She just went "No". At that point, even God's going, "Do you get it?!"”

Robin Williams (1951–2014) American actor and stand-up comedian

German comedy: "Knock-knock--We ask the questions!".
Weapons of Self Destruction (2010)

God, People, Question, Thinking

“Life is a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those who think. It is vital to mourn the victims of this government, but not at the expense of losing our sense of humor. Our ability to laugh directly coincides with our ability to fight. If we make fun of it, we can transcend it.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, ACTIVISM

Life, Feeling, Thinking, Sense

“On MySpace … the whole demographic of the stand-up comedy fan has changed. It's like an indie band thing. People think they've discovered you.”

Jim Gaffigan (1966) comedian, actor, author

Eric Deggans (February 19, 2006) "Seems like MySpace is everyone's space", St. Petersburg Times, p. 1A.

People, Thinking, Change

“I didn’t think anyone outside of LA would read Less Than Zero. I thought The Rules of Attraction would be a huge hit. I assumed people would react to American Psycho as a comedy. I thought I showcased some of my best writing in The Informers. And I was totally caught off-guard by the amount of good reviews and bad reviews Glamorama elicited. I’ve stopped guessing because I’m always wrong. And quite honestly: I don’t care. Writing the book is the main thing. Waiting for a reaction: a waste of time. But, obviously, I hope people respond to the book in a favorable way. I don’t want people to dislike it. But I don’t really mind if they do.”

Bret Easton Ellis book Lunar Park

http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780307264305&view=auqa

People, Books, Hope, Way

“Dissembling was the specialty of Broadway musicals. The storylines were scrupulously heterosexual. What could I have heard in them that made me think they explained me? It was this: The innocent characters were so wonderfully compromised by the actors who played them; by the writers and musicians who created them. The scar tissue on voices. The makeup on faces. Youth! The wicked stage! The jaded legend refreshed the innocence of my youth. Musical comedy songs were more real than my life because they were articulate and because they had ligaments of narrative attached to them. For today’s young queers and lonelys, these songs must seem quaint and campy and not useful. But they were never campy for me—for us?—they only became camp in the attempt to share them without embarrassment.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

Life, Youth, Music, Thinking

“The full comedy of the situation was revealed in 1900, when, nearly a century after France and Germany had laid the foundations of a public system of secondary education, the Court of Appeal virtually decided that there was no Public Authority in England with legal power to establish and maintain secondary schools.”

R. H. Tawney (1880–1962) English philosopher

Secondary Education For All (1922)

Education, School

“I am in no way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth and galliardize of company, yet in one dream I can compose a whole Comedy, behold the action, apprehend the jests, and laugh myself awake at the conceits thereof.”

Thomas Browne book Religio Medici

Section 11
Religio Medici (1643), Part II

Dreams, Way

“His name was William Saroyan. He was the first writer I fell in love with, boyishly in love. I was held by his unaffected voice, his sentimentality, his defiant individualism. I found myself in the stories he told… I learned from Saroyan that you do not have to live in some great city — in New York or Paris — in order to write… When I was a student at Stanford, a generation ago, the name of William Saroyan was never mentioned by any professor in the English Department. William Saroyan apparently was not considered a major American talent. Instead, we undergraduates set about the business of psychoanalyzing Hamlet and deconstructing Lolita. In my mind Saroyan belongs with John Steinbeck, a fellow small town Californian and of the same generation. He belongs with Thornton Wilder, with those writers whose aching love of America was formed by the Depression and the shadow of war. … Saroyan's prose is as plain as it is strong. He talks about the pleasure of drinking water from a hose on a summer afternoon in California's Central Valley, and he holds you with the pure line. My favorite is his novel The Human Comedy… In 1943, The Human Comedy became an MGM movie starring Mickey Rooney, but I always imagined Homer Macaulay as a darker, more soulful boy, someone who looked very much like a young William Saroyan…”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

"Time Of Our Lives" (26 May 1997) http://www.cilicia.com/armo22_william_saroyan_6.html

Love, War, Pleasure, Soul

“The continuum had somehow managed to correct the incongruity, pairing off lovers like the last act of a Shakespearean comedy, though just how it had managed it wasn’t clear. What was clear was that it had wanted us out of the way while it was doing whatever it was doing. So it had done the time-travel equivalent of locking us in our rooms.”

Connie Willis book To Say Nothing of the Dog

Source: To Say Nothing of the Dog (1998), Chapter 26 (p. 436)

Way, Travel, Lovers, Time

“If the Author will it, there may be appended to any comedy an afterpiece. Meanwhile, so far as I may judge, the life of Manuel ends here.”

James Branch Cabell book The Cream of the Jest

The Epilogue : Which is the proper ending of all comedies; and heralds, it may be, an afterpiece.
The Cream of the Jest (1917)

Life

“She is one of the most talented people that ever lived. I mean, either in stand-up comedy, or acting, or whatever you want, you can't beat Madeline Kahn.”

Madeline Kahn (1942–1999) American actress

Mel Brooks, reported in Tom Vallance, (December 6, 1999) "Obituary: Madeline Kahn" http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_/ai_n14275712, The Independent About

People

“Stop dying. Am trying to write a comedy.”

Wilson Mizner (1876–1933) American writer

Telegram to his brother, upon the news that Addison was fatally ill.
Quoted by Stuart B. McIver, Dreamers, Schemers and Scalawags, Pineapple Press, Sarasota, Florida, 1994. ISBN 1-56164-034-4.
On Death and Dying

“Chaplin you got to go with. Chaplin is a man whose talents is such that you have to gamble. First off, comedy is his backyard. He's a genius, a cinematic genius. A comedic talent without peer.”

Marlon Brando (1924–2004) American screen and stage actor

Rolling Stone Issue No. 213 (May 20, 1976) on Charlie Chaplin

“I think being successful in comedy is being funny and making jokes - anything beyond that is the icing on the cake.”

Jimmy Carr (1972) British comedian and humourist

Charlotte Cripps (January 31, 2007) "Stand up and be counted, comedians", The Independent.

Thinking, Success

“You say I look goofy? OK, great. You say it's comedy? Great. Whatever anyone thought, I didn't care. Could be goony, could be sexy, could be stupid, could be cool. I didn't know, but as long as it was something, you know?”

Iggy Pop (1947) American rock singer-songwriter, musician, and actor

On his performances
Rolling Stone interview (2003)

Stupidity

“Ralph Wood argues quite persuasively that the Christian vision of the world is fundamentally comic. Drawing on the insights of Karl Löwith, Wood observes that because Christians do not, as the ancients did, regard the universe as eternal or divine but as created, comedy is made possible by the acknowledgment of the sheer contingency of all that is.”

Stanley Hauerwas (1940) American theologian

Source: The Work of Theology (2015), p. 217 http://books.google.com/books?id=lY1yCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT217

World, Universe, Drawing

“I'm not sure sophisticated comedy has a place on television any more … I'd like to think it still does … But I'm not sure the networks are interested, I'm not sure anybody else is interested in sophisticated comedy any more.”

Kelsey Grammer (1955) American actor, comedian, producer, director, writer, voice artist

As quoted in "'Frasier' leaving the building" by Andy Walton at CNN (3 May 2004) http://articles.cnn.com/2004-05-03/entertainment/finale.frasier_1_frasier-niles-and-daphne-frasier-crane/2?_s=PM:SHOWBIZ

Thinking

“A scene like Peter's denial fits into no antique genre. It is too serious for comedy, too contemporary and everyday for tragedy, politically too insignificant for history—and the form which was given it is one of such immediacy that its like does not exist in the literature of antiquity.”

Erich Auerbach Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature

Source: Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (1946), p. 45

History, Literature

“My oldest brother used to take me to the theater. The first play he took me to see was 'Black Comedy,' then he took me to see 'Butley.' We'd see all these British plays. And 'Hello, Dolly,' with Pearl Bailey. I was unconsciously thinking, 'Gee, I would love to be able to do that.”

Nathan Lane (1956) American actor

Ron Weiskind, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (December 21, 1997) "Lane can't stop his career or his repartee", Mobile Register, p. E3.

Love, Thinking

“Selling pot allowed me to get through college and make enough money to start off in comedy.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

Bill Maher Confesses: ‘Selling Pot Allowed Me to Get Through College’ http://www.mediaite.com/tv/bill-maher-confesses-selling-pot-allowed-me-to-get-through-college/ September 9, 2013.

Money

“Some forms of reality are so horrible we refuse to face them, unless we are trapped into it by comedy. To label any subject unsuitable for comedy is to admit defeat.”

Peter Sellers (1925–1980) British film actor, comedian and singer

Mr. Strangelove (1999)

Reality

“Aristophanes turns Socrates into ridicule in his comedies, as making the worse appear the better reason.”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Socrates, 5.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 2: Socrates, his predecessors and followers

Appearance

“When we do well, we do the best comedy on TV. That's not ego; that's just the way it is.”

Lorne Michaels (1944) American television producer

Bill Carter interview during 1975-76 season, quoted in the February 13, 2015 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine reprinted by Yahoo, Bill Carter on Covering 'SNL' and Lorne Michaels: "Many Lost Their Minds in Pursuit" of His Approval https://tv.yahoo.com/news/bill-carter-covering-snl-lorne-michaels-many-lost-180002192.html

Way

“Sour Grapes is a comedy about things that aren't funny. It reminded me of Crash, an erotic thriller about things no one finds erotic. The big difference is that David Cronenberg, who made Crash, knew that people were not turned on by auto accidents. Larry David, who wrote and directed Sour Grapes, apparently thinks people are amused by cancer, accidental castration, racial stereotypes and bitter family feuds… The more I think of it, the more Sour Grapes really does resemble Crash (except that Crash was not a bad film). Both movies are like watching automobile accidents. Only one was intended to be.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/sour-grapes-1998 of Sour Grapes (17 April 1998) Reviews, Zero star reviews

People, Family, Thinking

“The mystery is that the world is at it is -- a mystery that is the source of all joy and all sorrow, of all hope and fear, and the source of development both creative and degenerative. The contingency of all into which time enters is the source of pathos, comedy, and tragedy.”

John Dewey (1859–1952) American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer

Time and Individuality (1940)

World, Fear, Hope, Time

“It's a natural aspect of the marketplace. It's always been that way in storytelling. The guy who was good at playing the lover plays the lover, the funny guy gets the comic role. Movies are so expensive, when they put them together they want to have a couple of solid blocks in what they're building. I accept that. In theater, though, I tend to look for other things, I think I tend to be best in comedy.”

Christopher Walken (1943) American actor

Terry Lawson: Knight-Ridder Newspapers (February 18, 1996) "Weird, As In Walken - No, He's Not Really Nuts … Maybe", St. Louis Post-Dispatch, p. 3D.

Way, Guy, Lovers, Nature

“I never lie, even to this day. Not even a little. Unless you count playing pranks on people, which I don't. That's comedy. Entertainment doesn't count. A joke is different from a lie, even if the difference is kind of subtle.”

Steve Wozniak book iWoz

Source: iWoz (2006), p. 12

People, Lie

“The difference between tragedy and comedy is the difference between experience and intuition. In the experience we strive against every condition of our animal life: against death, against the frustration of ambition, against the instability of human love. In the intuition we trust the arduous eccentricities we're born to, and see the oddness of a creature who has never got acclimatized to being created.”

Christopher Fry (1907–2005) British writer

"Comedy," Vogue, January 1951

Love, Life, Death, Animals

“It is great comedy to hear the secular, pro-gay left, so hostile to states’ rights in virtually every instance, suddenly discover the tyranny of centralized government. The newly minted protectors of local rule find themselves demanding: “Why should Washington dictate marriage standards for Massachusetts and California? Let the people of those states decide for themselves.” This is precisely the argument conservatives and libertarians have been making for decades! Why should Washington dictate education, abortion, environment, and labor rules to the states? The American people hold widely diverse views on virtually all political matters, and the Founders wanted the various state governments to most accurately reflect those views. This is the significance of the 10th Amendment, which the left in particular has abused for decades.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

2000s, 2001-2005

Hostility, Marriage, People, Education

“I watch news programs and I love Comedy Central. I love The Daily Show-it's smarter than anything else. I also like The Critic and Celebrity Death Match and South Park. I love all of that.”

Bea Arthur (1922–2009) actress, singer, comedian

Interview, TV Legends, August 6, 2005

Love, Death

“Our comedies are not to be laughed at.”

Samuel Goldwyn (1879–1974) American film producer (1879-1974).

Reported in Paul F. Boller, John George, They Never Said It (1990), p. 38-39.
Misattributed

“If i were a little braver i would have asked her something like, "Do you think Kickass: the movie is a comedy in the traditional, classical sense?" and we could have that conversation and it would lead to other conversations during the flat and lonely times.”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Adverbs (2006), Obviously

Thinking, Sense, Time

“The trope was eminently Oakeshottian. Politics was not a battle of interests, or a quest for truth, or a voyage of progress – it was an aesthetic performance, to captivate an audience. But it was not high theatre (Oakeshott had also insisted that politics was a second-rate activity). It was more like commercial theatre, the drama of the boulevards that plays to our emotions or embarrassments – Rattigan rather than Racine, he explained. On this stage, Mount has certainly given us a stylish production. We might call it the comedy of reform.”

Perry Anderson (1938) British historian

Source: Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas (2005), Ch. 2. "Constitutional Theatre, Ferdinand Mount" (1992), p. 48

Truth

“Greig, currently hot in the TV comedy Green Wing, has a dark, brittle glamour that isn't quite beauty (there's a disconcerting touch of Edwina Currie about her) and suggests an incipient unhappiness lurking beneath the ready wit.”

Tamsin Greig (1966) English actress

About her performance as Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, by Charlie Spencer in The Telegraph. After reading the part about Edwina Currie, she refused to read any more of the article.
Criticism, A review of her as Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing

Beauty

“About the only power you have is the power to discriminate. Living in a culture like this, you have to make choices and search out what has the most authentic content or substance. In the 1960s, while on LSD, I realized that my mind was a garbage receptacle of mass media images and input. I spent my whole childhood absorbing so much crap that my personality and mind are saturated with it. God only knows if that affects you physically! As a kid I became increasingly interested in earlier periods of culture. I turned into a little nostalgia boy, and I became steeped in the Our Gang fantasy from watching them on TV. So much so, that my speech patterns were affected. The style of those Our Gang comedies was so charming that I started acting and talking like Jackie Cooper and Alfalfa. They had these cute kids, artificial mannerisms. It must have been embarrassing for people to hear me talk like that.”

Robert Crumb (1943) American cartoonist

The R. Crumb Handbook by Robert Crumb and Peter Poplaski (2005), p. 60

God, People, Search, Boy

“Dark comedies are my favorite, because I love that feeling – being happy and scared at the same time. It's my favorite way to feel – when I'm on the edge of my seat but I'm happy, that sense of conflicting emotions. And there's a lot of that in the show, I think.”

Pendleton Ward (1982) American animator

'Adventure Time' creator talks '80s https://www.usatoday.com/story/popcandy/2012/11/01/adventure-time-creator-talks-80s/1672583/ (November 1, 2012)

Love, Happiness, Way, Feeling

“The eighteenth-century polymath Thomas Young was the last person to have read all the books published in his lifetime. That means that he would've read all the Shakespeare and all the Greek and Roman classics and all the theology and all the philosophy and all the science. But the same man today, a man who had read all the books published today, would've had to've read all Dan Brown's novels, two volumes of Chris Moyles' autobiography, The World According to Clarkson by Jeremy Clarkson, The World according to Clarkson II by Jeremy Clarkson, The World according to Clarkson III by Jeremy Clarkson… his mind would be awash with bad metaphors and unsustainable, reactionary opinion; one long anecdote about the time that Comedy Dave put a pound coin in the urinal. In short, the man who had read everything published today would be more stupid than a man who had read nothing. That's not a good state of affairs.”

Stewart Lee (1968) English stand-up comedian, writer, director and musician

Series 1 Episode 1: "Toilet Books"

Books, Stupidity, World, Science

“While clearly an impregnable masterpiece, Don Quixote suffers from one fairly serious flaw - that of outright unreadability. This reviewer should know, because he has just read it. The book bristles with beauties, charm, sublime comedy; it is also, for long stretches (approaching about 75 per cent of the whole), inhumanly dull…. Reading Don Quixote can be compared to an indefinite visit from your most impossible senior relative, with all his pranks, dirty habits, unstoppable reminiscences, and terrible cronies. When the experience is over, and the old boy checks out at last (on page 846 - the prose wedged tight, with no breaks for dialogue), you will shed tears all right: not tears of relief but tears of pride. You made it, despite all that Don Quixote could do.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

Opening paragraph of his review of The Adventures of Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes, translated by Tobias Smollett
The War Against Cliché: Essays and Reviews 1971-2000 (2001)

Books, Beauty, Boy, Tear

“When you get in these people when you… get these people in, say: 'Look, the problem is that this will open the whole, the whole Bay of Pigs thing, and the President just feels that' ah, without going into the details… don't, don't lie to them to the extent to say there is no involvement, but just say this is sort of a comedy of errors, bizarre, without getting into it, 'the President believes that it is going to open the whole Bay of Pigs thing up again.' And, ah because these people are plugging for, for keeps and that they should call the FBI in and say that we wish for the country, don't go any further into this case, period!”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

The 'smoking gun tape' on (23 June 1972)
1970s

People, Lie, Error, Feeling

“[The Passion story] completely destroys the aesthetics of the separation of styles; it engenders a new elevated style, which does not scorn everyday life and which is ready to absorb the sensory realistic, even the ugly, the undignified, the physically base. Or—if anyone prefers to have it the other way around—a new sermo humilis is born, a low style, such as would properly only be applicable to comedy, but which now reaches out far beyond its original domain, and encroaches upon the deepest and the highest, the sublime and the eternal.”

Erich Auerbach Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature

Source: Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (1946), p. 72

Life, Way, Passion

“He who perceives death perceives a sense of the human comedy, and quickly becomes a poet.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), pp. 39–40

Death, Sense

“If the purpose of comedy be to chastise human weaknesses I see no reason why any class of people should be exempt. This particular failing is one of the most damaging of all in its public consequences and we have seen that the theatre is a great medium of correction. The finest passages of a serious moral treatise are all too often less effective than those of a satire and for the majority of people there is no better form of reproof than depicting their faults to them: the most effective way of attacking vice is to expose it to public ridicule. People can put up with rebukes but they cannot bear being laughed at: they are prepared to be wicked but they dislike appearing ridiculous.”

Molière book Tartuffe

Si l’emploi de la comédie est de corriger les vices des hommes, je ne vois pas par quelle raison il y en aura de privilégiés. Celui-ci est, dans l’État, d’une conséquence bien plus dangereuse que tous les autres ; et nous avons vu que le théâtre a une grande vertu pour la correction. Les plus beaux traits d’une sérieuse morale sont moins puissants, le plus souvent, que ceux de la satire ; et rien ne reprend mieux la plupart des hommes que la peinture de leurs défauts. C’est une grande atteinte aux vices que de les exposer à la risée de tout le monde. On souffre aisément des répréhensions ; mais on ne souffre point la raillerie. On veut bien être méchant, mais on ne veut point être ridicule. Preface http://books.google.com/books?id=HH4fAAAAYAAJ&q=%22On+veut+bien+%C3%AAtre+m%C3%A9chant+mais+on+ne+veut+point+%C3%AAtre+ridicule%22&pg=PT87#v=onepage, as translated by John Wood in The Misanthrope and Other Plays (Penguin, 1959), p. 101 Variant translation http://books.google.com/books?id=vdFMAQAAIAAJ&q=%22People+do+not+mind+being+wicked+but+they+object+to+being+made+ridiculous%22&pg=PA127#v=onepage: People do not mind being wicked; but they object to being made ridiculous. Tartuffe (1664)

People, Way, Appearance

“Henryson's greatness is most plainly to be seen in the range of general principles and ideas which informs his poetry and which allows it to encompass tragedy and comedy alike. He is the most Shakespearian of the early Scottish poets.”

Robert Henryson (1425–1506) Scottish makar (poet)

John MacQueen, in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography vol. 26, s. n. Henryson, Robert.
Criticism

Idea

“American [comedy] was always stronger because you had Lucille Ball, you had Carol Burnett, you had Lily Tomlin, Gilda Radner. I came from a country where we just had Benny Hill girls. You had to run around in a bikini basically in the '80s in Britain. Then I did a sketch show and Pamela Stevenson and then (Dawn) French and (Jennifer) Saunders just shook it all up. But I grew up thinking I could be a character actress. I didn't think I could go into comedy.”

Tracey Ullman (1959) English-born actress, comedian, singer, dancer, screenwriter, producer, director, author and businesswoman

Quoted in 2015 in The Hollywood Reporter https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/tracey-ullman-bbcs-female-revolution-830223

Girl, Thinking, Country

“Many Frenchmen see their society as drifting in uncertain waters without an anchor. They are concerned by increasingly powerless elected governments, distant bureaucrats who intervene in every aspect of people’s lives, and an economic system that promises much but delivers little. The advocates of Western decline claim that Europeans no longer believe in anything and are thus doomed to lose the fight against homegrown Islamists who passionately believe in the little they know of Islam. A note of comedy is injected into this tragedy by people like President Hollande who keep repeating that the terror attacks had “nothing to do with Islam.” Is Hollande an authority on what is and what is not Islam? Talking heads repeat ad nauseam that France is not at war against Islam. OK. However, part of Islam is certainly at war against France, and the rest of the civilized world, including a majority of Muslims across the globe. One’s enemy is not whom one wants him to be but whom he wants to be. The Charlie killers saw themselves as jihadis, and it is only in seeing them as such that one could start dealing with them in an effective way. In designating them as Islamists, one is not “at war against Islam.” Millions of French are expected to take part in marches across the country today to pay respect to the 17 people, including 10 journalists, who were killed in the attacks. There is going to be just one slogan: “We are all Charlie.” Do they believe it? The French would do well to remember that, once all is said and done, they still live in one of the few countries in the world where they can think and say what they like, a state of bliss a majority of Muslims across the globe could only dream of. And, the prophets of decline notwithstanding, that is something worth living and fighting for.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

What happens to Western values if no one stands up against Islam? http://nypost.com/2015/01/11/what-happens-to-western-values-if-no-one-stands-up-against-islam/, New York Post (January 11, 2015). New York Post

War, People, World, Dreams

“Mossadeq, the orator, is difficult to judge as a politician because of the perpetual contradictions between his words and his acts, and because of his sudden changes of mood from elation to depression before one's very eyes. His absolute certainty, violently expressed in hysterical speeches, would turn to tears and sobbing. He had frequent "diplomatic" illensses and he played out macabre comedies in which he would exclaim: "I am a-dying…" and so forth. He has been compared to Robespierre, to Renzi and even to characters from the Commedia dell' Arte.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

Page 53
Publications, The Shah's Story (1980), On world leaders and statesmen

Art, Mood, Tear, Change

“I could see the room dividing as I spoke. I could hear the laughter of some and louder still silence of others. I realised that for some people this was regarded as an event with import. The magazine, the sponsors and some of those in attendance saw it as a kind of ceremony that warranted respect. In effect, it is a corporate ritual, an alliance between a media organisation, GQ, and a commercial entity, Hugo Boss. What dawned on me as the night went on is that even in apparently frivolous conditions the establishment asserts control, and won't tolerate having that assertion challenged, even flippantly, by that most beautifully adept tool: comedy.”

Russell Brand (1975) British comedian, actor, and author

Russell Brand - The Guardian (2013)

People, Laughter, Silence, Night

“Never, at any price, should we have put our money on France and against the peoples subjected to her yoke. On the contrary, we should have helped them to achieve their liberty and, if necessary, should have goaded them into doing so. There was nothing to stop us in 1940 from making a gesture of this sort in the Near East and in North Africa. In actual fact our diplomats instead set about the task of consolidating French power, not only in Syria, but in Tunis, in Algeria and Morocco as well. Our 'gentlemen' obviously preferred to maintain cordial relations with distinguished Frenchmen, rather than with a lot of hirsute revolutionaries, with a chorus of musical comedy officers, whose one idea was to cheat us, rather than with the Arabs, who would have been loyal partners for us.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

14 February 1945.
Disputed, The Testament of Adolf Hitler (1945)

Money, People, Music, Idea

“The secret of writing comedy is to know where it's all going, then get ahead of it.”

Robert Orben (1928) American magician and writer

Henry Allen (January 4, 1979) "Life in the Laugh Factory", The Washington Post, p. B1.

Secret

“The goat thing, I went out, I was drinking some beers with the writers - writers I couldn't stand, and they didn't like me either. They were all like Harvard, Yale, and [imperious voice] 'We've been studying comedy for seven years, and…we've never been on stage, but we know comedy! Bwahahaha!' So I said 'Listen, I know this is a little out there, but what about a guy…who has Tourette's of a goat?' And these guys just stare at me like 'Man, Breuer's HIGH out of his MIND!' I said 'The more he drinks, the more he starts eating the curtains, and he gets nuts and sings karaoke at the end of the night.' And then about two weeks later, this guy came back, he's like, 'Hey, I've got an idea for that weird goat thing you were talking about.' He said 'What if he only sings 80's?' And I thought that was the DUMBEST…thing I've ever heard in my life! And then, we tried it, and now I've got people drunk out of their minds in a bar trying to 'baa' at me. [drunken voice] 'Hey, man! Yo, yo man, it's the sheep dude right here! [drunken 'baa'ing] I shouldn'ta had that hot dog, man!”

Jim Breuer (1967) American actor and comedian

Just hammered, baaing at me in the street.
Explaining the origin of Goat Boy on Mancow's Morning Madhouse
Unsourced

Life, People, Dogs, Guy

“There's so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?”

Dick Cavett (1936) American talk show host

Mocking the TV-violence debate, as quoted in Life, Vol. 18 (1995), p. 8 http://books.google.com/books?id=bNcxAQAAIAAJ&q=%22There's+so+much+comedy+on+television.+Does+that+cause+comedy+in+the+streets?%22&dq=%22There's+so+much+comedy+on+television.+Does+that+cause+comedy+in+the+streets?%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=I23qTvzhLsWgtwfNmJCUCg&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAA

“You see, most people with multiple personalities get therapy. I get my own HBO comedy series!”

Tracey Ullman book Tracey Takes On...

Tracey Takes On... (1996–99)

People, Personality