God writes a lot of comedy... the trouble is, he's stuck with so many bad actors who don't know how to play funny. — Garrison Keillor
We sit in a room, laugh, and all come up with comedy situations, which we work out. Sometimes we cross the line, like getting a guy to pull out of his own wedding while the ceremony's taking place. — Joe Gatto
Comedy is difficult, especially slapstick. The trick is to have fun while you are performing it. — Maureen O'Hara
It's hard enough to write a good drama, it's much harder to write a good comedy, and it's hardest of all to write a drama with comedy. Which is what life is. — Jack Lemmon
Comedy has to be based on truth. You take the truth and you put a little curlicue at the end. — Sid Caesar
Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious. — Peter Ustinov
What is comedy? Comedy is the art of making people laugh without making them puke. — Steve Martin
A formula for comedy is comedy equals tragedy plus time. A difficult or uncomfortable situation takes place, and then you laugh about it later down the road. — Brian Regan
Comedy itself is based upon very old principles of which I can readily name seven. They are, in short: the joke, exaggeration, ridicule, ignorance, surprise, the pun, and finally, the comic situation. — Jack Benny
I think people like comedies and I think concept driven comedies seem to be working when it's a clear concept and you deliver funny stuff. — Todd Phillips
The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible. — David Ogilvy
As much experience, education and awareness as one can attain is important for a comedian. — Shelley Berman
There's sketch, improv, writing, acting, music, and badminton. Those are the seven forms of comedy. — T. J. Miller
Comedy is defiance. It's a snort of contempt in the face of fear and anxiety. And it's the laughter that allows hope to creep back on the inhale. — Will Durst
Short Writing Comedy Quotes
Yes, it's tough, but not as tough as doing comedy. — Edmund Gwenn
Real comedy doesn't just make people laugh and think, but makes them laugh and change. — Sam Kinison
Without comedy as a defense mechanism I wouldn't be able to survive. — Garry Shandling
Sometimes I wonder how I got into comedy at all. — Don Adams
Someone who makes you laugh is a comedian. Someone who makes you think and then laugh is a humorist. — George Burns
No matter what I have to say, I'm still trying to say it in comedic form. — Harold Ramis
The real reason for comedy is to hide the pain. — Wendy Wasserstein
There comes a point in your life when you need to stop reading other people's book and write your own.
Writing Comedy Jokes Quotes
There can be a science to joke writing, there are certainly rules and patterns that can be followed, but I think most of the best comedy goes beyond the rules. — Robin Ince
Comedy is just to me, maybe it's a natural knack, if I can see where the joke is in the writing and I can see where the setup is and I can tell this is the way to make it. — Sayings
Comedy, at least the way I write comedy, is just drama with jokes. — Rob Walton
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing about.
I knew I just loved comedy, and I think it was my parents who initially brought up the notion of me trying to do stand-up. I think I actually tried writing jokes just at home, just kind of sitting around. But it seemed like a very real way to step into the world of comedy. — Seth Rogen
What I didn't realize is that the writing process for comedies is that you do your table read, and if you aren't funny on that first day during the table read, they take your jokes away and give them to somebody else. — David Morse
There are a lot of great jokes you can sit down and write, but that's just a written joke, versus the comedy of the situation. Ideally, you're pulling as much comedy out of the situation as you can. — John Mulaney
Until the lion learns to write, every story will glorify the hunter.
Every week for me was the same audience, and every week they heckled me. The better I got at comedy, the better the audience was at heckling me. But it helped me with my joke writing. — Felipe Esparza
At first I had no skills in writing comedy. I didn't know what a joke was, but, as someone once told me, your emotions follow your intent. If you create the intention of starting a comedy act, slowly your mind starts adjusting and you arrive at a new emotional state. — Steve Martin
My gift was in comedy. I found out I could make jokes. I could tell jokes. I could write them. So over the years, that's what I've done. — Woody Allen
Comedy is serious - deadly serious. Never, never try to be funny! The actors must be serious. Only the situation must be absurd. Funny is in the writing, not in the performing. If the situation isn't absurd, no amount of joke will help. — Mel Brooks
Writing Humor Quotes
A poem is never finished, only abandoned. — Paul Valery
If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried. — Steven Wright
At the risk of appearing disingenuous, I don't really think of myself as 'writing humor.' I'm simply reporting on the world I observe, which is frequently hilarious. — Richard Russo
He writes so well he makes me feel like putting my quill back in my goose. — Fred Allen
Based on what you know about him in history books, what do you think Abraham Lincoln would be doing if he were alive today? 1) Writing his memoirs of the Civil War. 2) Advising the President. 3) Desperately clawing at the inside of his coffin. — David Letterman
I think people appreciate a songwriter who shows different sides. The whole angst thing is cool, but if that's all you've got, it's just boring. Everything I write, whether it's happy or sad, has a sense of humor to it. — Katy Perry
Write hard and clear about what hurts.
A writer's voice is not character alone, it is not style alone; it is far more. A writer's voice line the stroke of an artist's brush- is the thumbprint of her whole person- her idea, wit, humor, passions, rhythms. — Patricia Lee Gauch
Just tell the truth, and they'll accuse you of writing black humor. — Charles Willeford
Whenever I'm out of town for at least a week, I feel like I should write a postcard or something, but you can be a genius, you try and write a postcard you come across like a moron anyway: 'This city's got big buildings. I like food. Bye.' — Jim Gaffigan
I can't imagine being a woman in the world of acting, like where you age starts to weigh you down - you go from being attractive to where they [directors] decided you're out... I feel like with stand-up comedy, it doesn't matter if I've gotten fatter. — Jim Jefferies
It’s the ultimate pinnacle of stand-up to have an hour on HBO, but way more people see Comedy Central and they’ve been good to me. — Daniel Tosh
I keep my stand-up comedy notes in a pile on my desk. I don't organize my act. I keep myself in a state of confusion. It stresses me out, but I prefer creative chaos. — Joy Behar
Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.
I just love entertaining. I will do anything - stand-up comedy, video games, fencing, internet shorts - I just want to keep being lucky enough to entertain people anyway I can. I try never to limit my art to a medium. — Matthew Gray Gubler
I don't do drugs. If I want a rush I just stand up when I'm not expecting it. — Dylan Moran
Stand-up comedy is an art form and it dies unless you expand it. — Sam Kinison
Your life is your story. Write well. Edit often.
I hate being mean. I watch those roasts on Comedy Central and they make the hair on the back of my neck stand up. — Downtown Julie Brown
I watch a happy person doing stand-up, and I go, "What the hell is this? This person's happy!" You need internal conflict. You need the guy to be out of step with society. It's a tool for comedy. — Zach Galifianakis
When you're standing around for an hour doing stand up it's no big deal but when you're standing around watching a show for an hour - it's a big difference. It's annoying - your feet hurt, your back hurts - it's just not the most comfortable way to see stand-up comedy. — Joe Rogan
I've seen stand up comedy, and after a while you start to notice that a lot of people are doing things that are like a lot of other people. There can be a bit of a herd mentality, and that's obviously less interesting because there's less going on. I'm just being totally frank with you. — Dylan Moran
Sketch Comedy Quotes
We did sketch comedy, performed live improv, and then we made the transition to TV with 'Impractical Jokers.' — Joe Gatto
I wanted to be an English teacher. I wanted to do it for the corduroy jackets with patches on the side. When I got to college, as I was walking across campus one day, I ripped off a little flyer for this sketch-comedy group. It ended up being one of the greatest things I've ever done. — John Krasinski
We're an improv group and a sketch comedy group called the Tenderloins, that's our alter ego. — James Murray
A good friend knows all your stories. A best friend helped you write them.
That's what I love about sketch comedy: a sketch is five minutes, then it goes dark, and there's the potential for something else. — Jason Sudeikis
There's this other world where all comedians want to do is make funny videos. Typically what's happened in the past is that a comedian gets a standup career and over the course of 20 years builds it up to the point where Comedy Central gives them a sketch show. — Gavin McInnes
Monty Python crowd; half of them came from Cambridge, and half of them came from Oxford. But, there seems to be this jewel, this sort of two headed tradition of doing comedy, of doing sketches, and that kind of thing. — Rowan Atkinson
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
I was very serene, and I still am, until I start talking in another voice, then suddenly I have a lot of volume and I'm frantic. But I didn't want to be one of those people who's always talking in accents in real life, so I started doing sketch comedy. — Kate McKinnon
If you look at any successful skit comedy show, ever, there is that format of introducing you to the player in the beginning, and then going on to see those sketches. — Keegan-Michael Key
Nobody wants to see sketch comedy that's the same sketch they've seen time and time again, or that's just a rehash of that thing. — Jordan Peele
Everybody needs some good sketch comedy. — Bob Odenkirk
Comedic Quotes
I have comedic things in my stuff, but I don’t consider myself a comedian. I’m just a YouTuber, I guess just a personality. — Ryan Higa
I'm always the guy on tour that tries to get guys chatting and a lot of banter back and forth so I definitely feel that a lot of bodybuilders have that comedic side in them, they're just a little bit more introverted. — Phil Heath
I'd probably be better in an action role and even a more comedic role as I find myself pretty hilarious. — Phil Heath
You have the itch for writing born in you. It's quite incurable. What are you going to do with it?
I'd rather get a good clean laugh with good material, than an easy laugh by swearing or shocking. That's not clever or comedic, anybody can get a laugh that way, it's too easy. — Jim Dale
As the 1960s began, a new breed of Hollywood leading lady was emerging. She was elegant, international, and wonderfully comedic. — Maureen O'Hara
If you look at anything, there are always comedic moments. — Bradley Cooper
If they give you lined paper, write the other way.
When you are honest in your comedy, you have to acknowledge the world that you're in. Through a comedic voice you're talking about what needs to be talked about, whether it's race relations or politics or anything that's happening on a global or an American scale. — Trevor Noah
We're all real people with moments of intense honesty and pathos and humanity. We all experience that, whether you're comedic or not. — Bob Odenkirk
You know, when you're part of a comedic duo, you can take breaks. It's kind of like having a partner that is good with a kid. — Robert Downey, Jr.
Great Comedy Quotes
My parents used to throw great New Year's Eve parties. They invited such an eclectic mix of showbiz people. All those cool people were always hanging out at our apartment. — Ben Stiller
If you are a great dramatic actor then you often don't know if people are enjoying your stuff at all because they are sitting there in silence. But with comedy it's a simple premise. If it's funny, people laugh. If it's not, they don't. — Steve Coogan
The great thing about 'The Office' and it being single-camera and the documentary style is that it's mostly a comedy, but 10 percent of it is, we get to show the existential angst that exists in the American workplace. — Rainn Wilson
Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.
I love music, my followers love music, and I know LiveXLive is the ultimate home for the live music experience. We're going to bring great comedy and great music together like no one else is doing, and we'll have incredible access and resources to do it. — Jake Paul
The Internet is a great place to find unconventional comedy that you can't find anywhere else. — Andy Dick
Sometimes if I really want to get someone's attention, I'll start a sentence with something like, "I'm not racist, but..." I say, "I'm not racist, but you look great today." They say, "That wasn't racist at all." I said, "I know. I said I'm not racist. You never listen. Typical Mexican." — Demetri Martin
My dad died, and my grandfather died, and my great-grandfather died. And the guy before him, I don't know. Probably died. — Norm MacDonald
You don't want to continue to do one thing and only one thing. You want to keep challenging yourself and if you do well at it, great, if you fall on your face, you tried. Like, she's really terrible at comedy! Who knew? But if you didn't try and put yourself out there you'd never know. — Lucy Liu
I think I look great in green, and I'm going to start wearing more green. — Garry Shandling
I think we can all agree that sleeping around is a great way to meet people. — Chelsea Handler
Comedy Shows Quotes
We're barely a prank show, in my opinion. We don't consider it that, we don't call our stuff pranks. The challenges that we do are more social experiments that put each other in awkward situations. — Joe Gatto
I was drafted and went to Korea where I had an opportunity to create a production team that did dramatic and comedy shows. I had also done a little disc jockeying. — Casey Kasem
That's really what 'Jokers' is - an improv show. — James Murray
Jokers' is an improv show in disguise. — James Murray
With the show itself, we try to think of new and different ways to make each other laugh, while enjoying what we're doing. — Joe Gatto
We even say a lot of the times, we'll put our own filter on. We'll rein each other in when somebody's out there. If we see somebody's getting mad we'll change the direction on purpose. Cause that's not what our show is. It's not getting people upset. It's making each other laugh. — Joe Gatto
The thing that we like about our show is that it's our take on a kind of format. It's a hidden camera comedy show where we don't even call it a 'prank show' because we're made to fool each other and our friends. — Joe Gatto
Hitler was a vegetarian. Just goes to show, vegetarianism, not always a good thing. Can in some extreme cases lead to genocide. — Bill Bailey
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. — Will Ferrell
When I was in third grade I taught myself ventriloquism... What's hard is to learn to be an entertainer and make people laugh. I was a few years out of college before I felt I had enough material. Then in 1988 I moved to L.A. and started to do some shows at comedy clubs. — Jeff Dunham
All we need is a meteorologist who has once been soaked to the skin without ill effect. No one can write knowingly of the weather who walks bent over on wet days. — E. B. White
I have a paper cut from writing my suicide note. It's a start. — Steven Wright
Welcome to my world! I've been through it all, and I often pinch myself to believe my luck. I design jewlery, create cosmetics, perform comedy, act, lecture, write books, travel, have a fabulous daughter, and a phenomenal grandson-and I feel I'm the luckiest woman on the planet. — Joan Rivers
I've done for the most part pretty much what I intended - I ended up doing comedy, writing and painting. I've had a ball. And as I get older, I just become an older kid. — Jonathan Winters
Most of my comedy writing happens through improvisation on stage; doing it in the moment. — Marc Maron
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. — George Carlin
Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar. — E. B. White
That's the best advice I can give - when you're trying to write a comedy, first write a drama, and then make it funny. — Jason Segel
I do all these various activities like painting and writing, comedy and films probably because not that I'm good at everything but because I'm not good at any of these things. — Takeshi Kitano
I used to write bits and pieces of comedy material for various comics that were at the Windmill... as well as my film job, I was under contract, I was allowed to do that and everything. — Val Guest
In the U.K. I'm probably better known as a comedy writer - or certainly that's my background is in writing comedy. — Charlie Brooker
I'm trying my hand at writing. I'm writing a couple of projects for HBO, a half hour comedy and a miniseries. — Charles S. Dutton
Writing, acting, music, comedy. A deep love of literature and books. Thank God for all the artists who've helped me. — Bill Hicks
I have a rule - 'funny is funny!' When I write comedy, it's not my aim to upset people. I will be offensive, edgy and immature, but I will also be very intelligent and relevant. At my shows, there are no holy cows. — Vir Das
BoJack especially is a very dialogue based show. A lot of the comedy comes from conversations, and a lot of story comes from misunderstandings and people trying to connect with each other, and there was a really interesting challenge trying to write a script with no dialogue. — Raphael Bob-Waksberg
Eventually, this is how I would like to be remembered at the end of my career: He was never the best in anything he did - comedy, acting, filmmaking, writing, etc. But nobody was better at doing different things at the same time than he was. — Takeshi Kitano
I can only develop a stand-up show by being on stage. I can't write it. Whenever I see comedy written down, it very rarely makes me laugh. — John Bishop
I knew I wanted to work with Brad [Falchuk] and Ian [Brennan] again on something comedic, and we are having a blast writing SCREAM QUEENS. We hope to create a whole new genre - comedy-horror - and the idea is for every season to revolve around two female leads. — Ryan Murphy
I think if you write humor, then people don't - you know - they don't give you that much credit. They tend to think you just dictate your stories into a tape recorder. And I'm not necessarily insulted by that, because I think that just means that it looks easy. — David Sedaris
Great literature must spring from an upheaval in the author's soul. If that upheaval is not present then it must come from the works of any other author which happens to be handy and easily adapted. — Robert Benchley
And the sad truth is that nobody wants me to write comedy. The Exorcist not only ended that career, it expunged all memory of its existence. — William Peter Blatty
I believe there are two ways of writing novels. One is mine, making a sort of musical comedy without music and ignoring real life altogether; the other is going right deep down into life and not caring a damn. — P. G. Wodehouse
A writer is like a bean plant - he has his little day, and then gets stringy. — E. B. White
I think the hardest thing to do in the world, show-business-wise, is write comedy. — Carol Burnett
I think all Internet comments should be disengaged. But I kind of live and die by it. It's completely irresistible. It's not like comedy. When I do a podcast or write an episode of TV, I have no feedback for that. That's the only way you know what you're doing is good or bad. — Harris Wittels
In high school, I went to a place called the Mountain School. It's on a farm in Vermont, and I read Emerson and Thoreau and ran around the woods. Now I go hiking with a bunch of my comedy buddies. We talk about our emotions. I also do a lot of writing on hikes, just to get the blood flowing and the ideas moving. — Nick Kroll
Verse comedy is interesting to me because of the challenge of writing in rhymed couplets, which is not a form that's usually amenable to English, yet to me it gives great possibility for comedy. — David Ives
I learned a few things on my own since, and modified some of the things he taught me, but everything, unequivocally, that I learned about comedy writing I learned from Danny Simon. — Woody Allen
Comedy is underrepresented in every actor's life, because it's so bloody difficult to write. — Michael Caine
I think it would be harder for me not to write comedy because the comic view of things is the one that comes most naturally to me. — Richard Russo
Dante Alighieri was not only a Christian poet or a priest, he was a man. He was a real poet. We can understand that the goal of Divine Comedy is beauty. You don't need also to understand Italian or to know Italian, because when Dante's writing, when we recite Dante out loud, it explodes a cosmos of illumination like to recite music, a symphony. — Roberto Benigni
I think most people that do comedy write for themselves. I don't think there is any other way you can do it, really. Otherwise it would be quite cynical. — David Walliams
I had to write a comedy set and film a show at the same time. And it's the second time I've been up on stage as a stand-up comedian with untested material. I was saying it out loud for the first time that night. It didn't go how I expected, but in the best possible way. — Zach Anner
In comedy writing, a sitcom plot is basically the same thing: What's the worst thing that could happen? But you're playing it for comic effect. It's a similar muscle being used with Black Mirror. — Charlie Brooker
I view my stories as sexual or personal. Curiously, I don't. When I was writing those stories I thought of them as comedy pieces in the vein of performance monologue, such as you might get with Richard Pryor, or Lenny Bruce, or George Carlin. So I don't feel vulnerable because I know the line of demarcation between "Writer Kevin" and "Narrative Kevin." — Kevin Keck
That's the thing I love about sports: sports force you to quit. You can't pursue your dream till you're 46. When it comes to acting, writing, comedy, nobody ever stops you. — Adam Carolla
I really love writing comedy. Writing romantic comedy is even nicer because you get to write about how insane we all act when we're falling in love. — Pearl Cleage
The secret of writing comedy is to know where it's all going, then get ahead of it. — Robert Orben
Funny as hell, searingly honest, and urgently real, Sam Pink's Rontel puts to shame most modern fiction. His writing perfectly captures the bizarre parade that is Chicago, with all its gloriously odd and wonderful people. This book possesses both the nerve of Nelson Algren and the existential comedy of Albert Camus. — Joe Meno
I love comedy and I would write things to myself as an exercise in writing. I didn't do well for years, and I quit. I started to break down why I was afraid and started to look at people I admired, like Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Freddie Prinze, George Carlin and all. — George Lopez
In Conclusion
Which quotation resonated with you best? Did you enjoy our collection of writing comedy quotes? Or may be you have a slogan about writing comedy to suggest. Let us know using our contact form.
Citation
Feel free to cite and use any of the quotes in this collection of writing comedy quotations. For popular citation styles(APA, Chicago, MLA), please use this citation page.
