Comedy Jokes Quotes & Sayings

I like situational comedy when people are being completely serious and yet you can find something extremely funny, not jokes. — Bruce Robinson

You need to understand that some comedy can have consequences. — Auliq Ice

I'm an actor. I've always been an actor. I've always approached all my comedy as an actor. I don't really care about jokes either. I tire of jokes. — Brett Gelman

I'm sitting at the bar, rearranging the order of my jokes. I'm under the delusion that I'm having bad shows because of some cosmic misalignment of words, phrases, and ideas. I may as well have cast runes into a spirit bowl, hoping that the collective heart of the audience would open to my necromantic call. Maybe that's how jugglers do it. Those guys never have shitty sets. — Patton Oswalt

I did a 'Last Comic Standing' audition in 2006, where you're just performing for three people in a comedy club, in a big comedy club, and I remember them cutting me off, asking about my name in the middle of one of my jokes. Yeah, it's just real weird when you're doing stand-up in that type of sterile, unnatural setting. — Hannibal Buress

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. I felt I could do it, so why not? — Seth Rogen

People have a comic bent or an angularity to their thinking, and those are the people who make jokes. And it's usually people who were in an environment, when they were young, where jokes were at a premium, or at least considered important to a life. My parents always listened to the comedy radio shows, we went to the comedy movies, and my parents appreciated comedy. So kids listen and follow what their parents like. — Carl Reiner

If you do something that is not gags and punchlines and is character-based, where there are no jokes as such, then it all has to come from a place of truth, and I love that - I love nothing more than getting very serious about my comedy. — Darren Boyd

With the Tonys it's a little tricky because a lot of the funnier jokes are more insider, so people watching at home may not get a Julie Taymor reference the way that New Yorkers would. So you have to figure out what comedy plays to a large audience and still respect the individuals who are there. — Neil Patrick Harris

I had always been - everybody kind of likes comedy. I was very interested in comedy, beyond just liking it. I had friends that took apart radios; I wanted to take apart jokes. — Chris Rock

My comedy is for adults, but you can have your kids listen to it. They won't get all the jokes because hopefully I'm more cerebral than a 10-year-old ... but if you ask my wife, I'm not! — Henry Cho

All jokes aside, it's a very difficult job playing the straight man. Jason is potentially the most brilliant straight man that ever was because he's also really funny while doing it, which is even harder. I've always seen myself playing characters who are flawed. We use comedy in our lives to obscure the drama. — Will Arnett

I think any decent comedy worth its salt has to have heart, otherwise it's just a bunch of jokes. I think people enjoy comedies that have a heart and soul to them. — Tom Bennett

I like to challenge myself not to be negative, because it's easy to take comedy to a negative place and criticize the outside world. Trying to praise something through comedy or be appreciative and making jokes about it is more challenging than cutting things down. — Kyle Kinane

Tweeting is a great way to practice writing jokes, but there is so much more to comedy writing than just jokes. Jokes are a necessity, but you also have to learn how to write characters, to break a story, to keep coherence between episodes. I've learned more by being a TV writer than I ever could've on my own. — Megan Amram

And writing comedy and it really taught me how to kind of like craft jokes, it sounds like weird but really focus on crafting jokes and trying to make the writing really sharp. At the same time I did improv comedy in college, and that helped with understanding the performance aspect of comedy, you know, because it's different when you improv something vs. when you write it and they're both kind of part of my process now. — Nicholas Stoller

I used to go to the library all the time when I was kid. As a teenager, I got a book on how to write jokes at the library, and that, in turn, launched my comedy career. — Drew Carey

Comedy is a wonderful device for distance that allows us to look at what we're talking about with some degree of distance and hopefully with a bit more perspective and honesty. With many exceptions, a movie with no jokes is far less appealing to me. — Alexander Payne

If you think of the people who are funny in your life, you'll note it's not because they tell jokes, it's because of their character. If you develop characters, then you'll know them, and you'll know how they'll speak. The comedy will come out of the character. — Anne Beatts

It seems that two of the most basic forms of comedy are jokes and stories. And, of course, they are not mutually exclusive. — Demetri Martin

Comedy always works better when you're tracking the story and you care about the characters. That's why there's a lot of movies where there's not a ton of jokes, but you get huge laughs because there's a moment of relief. — Andy Samberg

I think of myself as a writer with a sense of humour rather than a comedy writer. Happy to tell a story with lots of jokes in it - I wouldn't know how to do jokes without the story. — Steven Moffat

I never was shy, but as far as telling jokes, I'm the worst. I like physical comedy; it's where I feel comfortable. — Malin Akerman

I think people like musicals. And when done with a modern comedic sensibility, musical comedy can be the most efficient delivery of both storytelling and jokes. — Rachel Bloom

Working at the magic shop really gave me a sense of comedy because it was all jokes. — Steve Martin

I don't think that women necessarily always write like women. I was a writer on the 'Comedy Central Roasts' for a while, and I always wrote the jokes that people assumed the men would write. — Whitney Cummings

The fish is that perfect, amazing guy it can never work out with - you know, a bird and a fish may fall in love - but where would they live? . . . So the fish is your total dream guy, he's smart, he's handsome, he gets all your jokes, he loves to talk, he gives you a nine-hour orgasm and then makes you homemade chocolate chip pancakes and serves you breakfast in bed - but he lives all the way across the country and neither of you can move, or he's married, or next in line for the throne, or he has a terminal disease or something . . . the fish. — Lisa Daily

I try to play the stiff, as much as I can, and play it dry, which is sometimes hard for me. My problem with comedy is to want to clown it up, but she's the funny one. Those are her jokes, not mine. For me, it's a lot of not doing anything. I just don't want to muck it up. — John Cho

What's fascinating about doing comedy about the referendum is, because it is the first time, it is the most extraordinary atmosphere. You find that if you are making jokes about politicians, it becomes intensely political. — Rory Bremner

He said he wouldn't stay, as he didn't care much for the smell of the paint, and fell over the scraper as he went out. Must get the scraper removed, or else I shall get into a scrape. I don't often make jokes. — George Grossmith

There was a sea of change in comedy in the late 1950s and '60s. We were dealing with vignettes as opposed to jokes. We were more socially aware. — Bob Newhart

The essence of all jokes, of all comedy, seems to be an honest or well intended halfness; a non performance of that which is pretended to be performed, at the same time that one is giving loud pledges of performance. The balking of the intellect, is comedy and it announces itself in the pleasant spasms we call laughter. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The reason most comedies don't win awards is that the filmmakers put the comedy first. This means you have to create a story around the jokes. — Paul Feig

When I do comedy, my brain sort of locks up in the infinite possibilities. That's where I get sort of lost. I think, "Oh, there are six other jokes that we could say here!" I feel more at home with drama. — Ryan Reynolds

Jokes are ideally pleasurable. They are an act of assassination without a corpse, a moment of total annihilation that paradoxically makes anything possible. — Penelope Gilliatt

The Mob essentially created the term 'stand-up comic' - according to eighty-six-year-old comedian Dick Curtis: 'The Outfit used to manage fighters. A stand-up fighter is a guy that is a puncher. A stand-up guy was a guy who was tough and you could depend on. The Outfit managed fighters and they managed clubs that booked comics, so the term found its way into the lexicon of nightclubs. A guy who just stood there and punched jokes - joke, joke, joke - he was a stand-up comic. — Kliph Nesteroff

I always wanted to be a comedic actor - that's what I wanted from the job - to do comedy and to create my own comedy. But I still love doing stand-up and will probably be doing it forever. I'd love to be an old guy who can't really walk, can't really stand-up, and I have to sit on the stool and tell jokes. — Adam DeVine

Some comedians tell nice jokes that you can tell to your kids. Some use bad words - they work 'blue.' If you don't want to hear a joke that's blue, you shouldn't go to a comedy club where a comedian who makes blue jokes is performing. — Gilbert Gottfried

To all you sensitive sallys out there who spend your time scribing angry letters, I have great news: Scientific models show that in the not-too-distant future, all the races will become so completely interbred that humanity will have a monolithic caramelish color and common facial features. There won't be blonds or hairy Jews anymore.Words like "Chink" will cease to have meaning. They will be relics, along with those who use them for comedy. Which is exactly why I am past that meta-racist shit and onto poop and pee. Onward and downward! — Sarah Silverman

Yes, I would say my comedy is grunge, evidenced by the fact my jokes have put an end to big-hair glam comedy. — Joel McHale

When you've been doing comedy for forty years, you really do know most of the jokes. And even if you don't know a specific joke, you can pretty much guess what it's going to be. — John Cleese

I'm not a comedian. I don't do stand-up. I don't tell jokes. I'm a comedic actor, and approach my work that way. The comedy comes through the character. — Eugene Levy

Either over neither, both over either/or, live-and-let-live over stand-or die, high spirits over low, energy over apathy, wit over dullness, jokes over homilies, good humor over jokes, good nature over bad, feeling over sentiment, truth over poetry, consciousness over explanations, tragedy over pathos, comedy over tragedy, entertainment over art, private over public, generosity over meanness, charity over murder, love over charity, irreplaceable over interchangeable, divergence over concurrence, principle over interest, people over principle. — Marvin Mudrick

In high school, we barely brushed against Ogden Nash, Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, or any of the other so-unserious writers who delight everyone they touch. This was, after all, a very expensive and important school. Instead, I was force-fed a few of Shakespeare's Greatest Hits, although the English needed translation, the broad comedy and wrenching drama were lost, and none of the magnificently dirty jokes were ever explained. (Incidentally, Romeo and Juliet, fully appreciated, might be banned in some U.S. states.) This was the Concordance again, and little more. So we'd read all the lines aloud, resign ourselves to a ponderous struggle, and soon give up the plot completely. — Bob Harris

I didn't want to do comedy again. It is way harder when you are doing comedy. You can't just concentrate on the character and the plot. In comedy, the writers, instead of obsessing about character and plot, obsess about the jokes. — Patricia Richardson

One of my biggest problems with comedy was that I did not understand some of the jokes. — Desi Arnaz

If we were making a cop comedy about bad cops or cops who were comically bad at the jobs, then the jokes would be more hijinks and more like slapstick. — Daniel J. Goor

Everybody is different. Some comedy is more musical like Steven Wright. His is a pillar of comedy to me. He invented a whole form and all his jokes are poems. So it's different. I wanted to do it like George Carlin. Now I do it like me. — Louis C.K.

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

There's a glorious sense of freedom in comedy, just allowing myself to tell jokes, allowing myself to interrupt myself and tell old African folk stories that I made up - or didn't - and Jamaican stories. — Neil Gaiman

There are things I've given up on
Like recording funny answering machine messages.
It's part of growing older
And the human race as a group has matured along the same lines.
It seems our comedy dates the quickest.
If you laugh out loud at Shakespeare's jokes
I hope you won't be insulted
if I say you're trying too hard.
Even sketches from the original Saturday Night Live
seem slow-witted and obvious now. — David Berman

I have a basic theorem as to how I do my jokes. Growing up, I knew when to cross the line and when not to cross the line. It's the same with my comedy. I know what my audience will take and how much they won't take. I can't give you a formula for it. It's my own personal formula inside my head. Somebody else's might be different. — Larry The Cable Guy

She points to where he went and looks to the neutral Baumen. "He - he did that to me on purpose! He's insane. Literally, insane!"
The munchkin just shrugs. "Welcome aboard!" and returns unconcerned to his work. — Nathan Reese Maher

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

Oh Christ, the exhaustion of not knowing anything. It's so tiring and hard on the nerves. It really takes it out of you, not knowing anything. You're given comedy and miss all the jokes. Every hour you get weaker. Sometimes, as I sit alone in my flat in London and stare at the window, I think how dismal it is, how heavy, to watch the rain and not know why it falls. — Martin Amis

All of comedy at some level is trial-and-error, whether it's a stand-up trying out jokes or a comedy show trying stories. — Michael Schur

He hit the circuit in 1917 as 'Frank Fay, Nut Monologist,' and resistance was immediate. Variety critically stated, 'Fay needs a good straight man, as before, to feed his eccentric comedy.' A comedian standing alone onstage? Unheard of. Doesn't this guy know anything about showbiz? To stand still and tell jokes was a foreign move. To perform without some kind of gimmick was considered amateurish. — Kliph Nesteroff

I like a naturalism to my dialogue and my comedy. I would rather have a few jokes sail by that might be more subtle than have every single joke hit hard. I would rather the comedy come out of character as opposed to feeling forced. Even if you're giving some laughs up for it. — Jon Favreau

A lot of female comedians will go up there in a sweatshirt and Converses, trying to dress themselves down, because it is sort of a boy's club. I'll go up in my heels. I like that people don't think I'll be funny. I'll take that on. I don't do standup comedy - I do standup and I do comedy, but I don't go up there and do jokes. — Carly Craig

Comedy Central is what these young people are viewing. The network speaks to their audience, which is saying, 'Give me fast jokes. Give me party stories and party language.' — Bill Cosby

I just love that part of comedy, where you see somebody's jokes develop. They try something new to see what works, and I just love that part. — Maria Bamford

All the jokes in my films, the comedy, they're not me, I just try to hold a big mirror up to us. — Yahoo Serious

We are living in the machine age. For the first time in history the comedian has been compelled to supply himself with jokes and comedy material to compete with the machine. Whether he knows it or not, the comedian is on a treadmill to oblivion. — Fred Allen

It's like love making, the foreplay is the biggest part, the same thing as comedy. If you can frame your show in such a way that the funny jokes become funnier. — Tommy Chong

Fuck it ... That's really the attitude that keeps a family together, it's not "we love each other", it's just "fuck it, man. — Louis C.K.

could hear Rico's ass laughing in the background like I was some nigga on Comedy Central telling jokes and shit — Lucinda John

At some point, I figured that it would be more effective and far funnier to embrace the ugliest, most terrifying things in the world
the Holocaust, racism, rape, et cetera. But for the sake of comedy, and the comedian's personal sanity, this requires a certain emotional distance. It's akin to being a shrink or a social worker. you might think that the most sensitive, empathetic person would make the best social worker, but that person would end up being soup on the floor. It really takes someone strong
someone, dare I say, with a big fat wall up
to work in a pool of heartbreak all day and not want to fucking kill yourself. But adopting a persona at once ignorant and arrogant allowed me to say what I didn't mean, even preach the opposite of what I believed. For me, it was a funny way to be sincere. And like the jokes in a roast, the hope is that the genuine sentiment
maybe even a goodness underneath the joke (however brutal) transcends. — Sarah Silverman

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

Sometimes, comedy and entertainment is not all about telling jokes; sometimes you just have to be you for a few moments. — Ray William Johnson

But even this gives rise to another central tenet, attendant to the Comedy Is Good myth: Comedy Is Hard. Certainly well-rendered comedy is hard. All things done well require practice and work. But for the most funny people, being funny is as inevitable as being double-jointed; it is a worldview formed long before words. One is born funny. The adage, as is, is incomplete. It should be Comedy is hard ... if you're not funny. Pirouettes are almost impossible ... without legs. Jokes can be honed, made better, tighter, and cleaner, and people can even be made funnier. But you can't really make someone funny who isn't. — David Rakoff

In black neighborhoods, everybody appreciated comedy about real life. In the white community, fantasy was funnier. I started looking for the jokes that were equally hilarious across the board, for totally different reasons. — Will Smith

First and foremost when you're doing comedy, you gotta be relevant and applicable to the times that you're living in. When you try and just do comedy about who is dating who and lifestyle jokes, it gets tiring after a while. It's hard to be funny in that realm. — Adam McKay

You all watched a sketch about feminism and you didn't even know it because of all the jokes. It's like when Jessica Seinfeld puts spinach in kids' brownies. Suckers! — Tina Fey

They have what you call a black night where they have black people come in for just one night only to watch comedy, and you get all your local drug dealers, thugs, prostitutes, all of them come in, sit down, and listen to you tell jokes. They the hardest people to make laugh. — Mike Epps

I don't like my wrestling or entertainment in general to be too clean or predictable for me as a fan. When I say clean, I'm not talking about dirty jokes, middle fingers and stuff like that. I'm actually not even a big fan of that. A lot of people talk about the attitude era being so great but a lot of it was terrible crap, sex jokes and over-the-top terrible bad comedy. It was Jerry Springer-like. They made a joke about a woman's breasts. Hilarious, but where's the wrestling? I look back on a lot of stuff now, and I'm like where's the wrestling? It's just a lot of crappy jokes. — Dean Ambrose

When I first started doing my stand-up act, I played the banjo, did comedy, magic tricks, juggled, read poetry. I stuck it all in. I didn't know you were supposed to just stand up and tell jokes. Essentially, that's what my act became: those five elements - except I dropped the poetry. — Steve Martin

I better start doing stand up comedy in Spanish before every comedian in Mexico translates my jokes. — Felipe Esparza

By exiling human judgment in the last few decades, modern law changed role from useful tool to brainless tyrant. This legal regime will never be up to the job, any more than the Soviet system of central planning was, because ti can't think. The comedy of law's sterile logic
large POISON signs warning against common sand, spending twenty-two years on pesticide review and deciding next to nothing, allowing fifty-year-old white men to sue for discrimination
is all too reminiscent of the old jokes we used to hear about life in the Eastern bloc.
Judgement is to law as water is to crops. It should not be surprising that law has become brittle, and society along with it. — Philip K. Howard

To call them emotional comedies sounds cloying. Like Billy Wilder said, 'You want to make them laugh and you want to make them cry,' and it's very hard to do so. If you ground it in reality, you get a more honest comedy. You don't have to reach for jokes to manufacture situations as much. And I think it's a type of film I do best. — Charles Shyer

When I watch a comedy that's just hitting you over the head with jokes constantly, some really hit, but if they miss, you're like, 'Eh.' — David Walton

When I'm playing comedy, I never do 'jokes.' Sometimes I'll deliver a line in a way I think is more likely to get a laugh, but all the best comedy is played straight. What's funny is the way it hits the world around it or the way it hits the other characters. — Bruce McGill

Comedy, at least the way I write comedy, is just drama with jokes. — Rob Walton

Jasper!" Casey shouts, startling the young woman. "My cargo is talking to me! — Nathan Reese Maher

For me, stand-up comedy is a conversation between me and the audience. I have to keep them listening. When I'm making jokes about cake for twenty minutes, I have to make sure my audience is interested and following where I'm going. — Jim Gaffigan

I was a lazy reader as a kid. One nutrition label on a box of Cap'n Crunch and I'd have to take a nap. — M.J. McGuire

I hope I never have to stop acting. I love it. But, I think the coolest thing about acting is working with these amazing people all the time, and writing represented a new way to meet those people and to tell stories, at the same time, which I've always wanted to do, and to tell jokes. I love comedy, so writing was a way of getting these jokes that I had down on the page. — Josh Lawson

Because it's uncensored cable, I think we'll be able to do the kind of sketch comedy that really hasn't been seen before. We can actually finish jokes. — Aries Spears

With stand-up, there's a little bit of an exaggerated reality because things have to be manipulated to create comedy, to create jokes. — Chris Hardwick

There's something about courting the darkness that makes some people see the truth in raw, twisted ways, as though they were shining a black light on life to illuminate the absurdity of it all. Comics tell you a truth you can only see from the underside of the psyche. At its best, comedy is prophesy and societal dream interpretation. At its worst it's just dick jokes. — Nadia Bolz-Weber

The British often shy away from any cinematic interpretation of real sex. They sometimes have what I call "subtle sex," which is really introspective and has soft music in the background. Either that or it's played for comedy. The British are kind of hung up about sex. They find it kind of titillating and they make jokes about it because they're nervous. — Steve Coogan

With comedy, the jokes will come out, and people will see them coming. Changes in daily life or current events can change the consciousness of audiences and can make the show less funny or feel more stale. — Robert Lopez

The Comedy Central CDs combined with the TV specials are what led to my stuff being traded and passed around, and a lot more people knowing my jokes than I thought. — Mike Birbiglia

I've been on a diet for two weeks and all I've lost is two weeks!
-Totie Fields- — David DeBacco

I think comedy has evolved like every art form, and people probably do less standing around and telling jokes, and more things that have to do with reality. — Adam Carolla

When doing a series, I look for something that has an idea you can think about, something that I'm noticing and aware of and thinking about, because when you're doing a series, you think about more than just jokes ... you know, when you're doing a comedy, you think about what's going to reflect people's experiences, in a way. — Darren Star

I actually imagined 'Thunderbolts' as a straight-up comedy book in a lot of ways, like a very dark comedy book, whereas 'Red Lanterns' is more of a cosmic saga that has some jokes every once in a while. — Charles Soule