Quotes & Sayings About Comedy Writing

What it is is that comedy is underrepresented in every actor's life, because it's so bloody difficult to write. Anyone can write; and then you leave it to special effects to make it look good. But comedy, you've got to do some writing. — Michael Caine

I listened to my first comedy album in 6th grade. It was Bill Cosby. My brother and I would play it over and over on a Fisher Price record player. A friend in high school also introduced me to Richard Pryor. I wasn't writing material back then, but I would say funny stuff. I was good at making fun of people's moms. If I knew something personal about you, it would be used against you. — Felipe Esparza

I knew what I wanted to do when I set out. I knew that I wanted to write a book that told the story, obviously. I wanted it be comedy first, because I felt like there already had been childhood druggy stories that were very serious, and I felt that the unique thing here was that I was a comic and I could tell the story with some levity, and I have been laughing at these stories my whole life. — Moshe Kasher

After the first few readings in comedy venues I did begin to write for laughs. There's something so gratifying about stimulating laughter. — Aaron Belz

The writer seems constrained, not by his own free will but by some powerful and unscrupulous tyrant who has him in thrall, to provide a plot, to provide comedy, tragedy, love interest, and an air of probability embalming the whole so impeccable that if all his figures were to come to life would find themselves dressed down to the last button of their coats in the fashion of the hour. The tyrant is obeyed; the novel is done to a turn. But sometimes, more and more often as time goes by, we suspect a momentary doubt, a spasm of rebellion, as pages fill themselves in the customary way. Is life like this? Must novels be like this? — Virginia Woolf

I found out I had a real love for comedy and comedy writing. The logic was, there weren't too many female comedians, so I thought I might as well try a field that had fewer competitors than the field I was in, which was acting, singing and dancing. — Rita Rudner

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

I had a blind date with a dentist - and he told me to come back in six months. — Joan Rivers

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

I wasn't disciplined at all. As good of an athlete as I was, I was not disciplined. Had I had the drive that I have in comedy, and acting, and writing, that's why I knew it just wasn't right for me. — Bernie Mac

That this is a practice contrary to the rules of criticism will be readily allowed; but there is always an appeal open from criticism to nature. The end of writing is to instruct; the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing. That the mingled drama may convey all the instruction of tragedy or comedy cannot be denied, because it includes both in its alterations of exhibition, and approaches nearer than either to the appearance of life, by shewing how great machinations and slender designs may promote or obviate one another, and the high and the low co-operate in the general system by unavoidable concatenation. — Samuel Johnson

If you do finish the book and are still scared of me and people of my ilk, then I recommend you schedule an appointment with a therapist. Either that, or try writing your own book — Maz Jobrani

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

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

Professor Irwin Corey had some of the best timing in the world, and that is something you can't steal. He talked nonsense, not punch-lines, per se. It was a great performance thing he did and his timing was impeccable. Pat Paulsen was a master of comedy too. The Smothers Brothers' strength was not in the content, but how it was said. We had a couple of our albums, including the Purple Onion album, translated in script form. It didn't work at all. It is no wonder that writers had a hard time writing for the Smothers Brothers, because they wrote impressions, but there was something else. — Tommy Smothers

At the end of the day I'm writing comedy. If you get too realistic as a comedy writer with your disasters, it stops being funny. — Simon Rich

The strongest should come first in comedy because once a character is really established as funny everything he does is funny. — F Scott Fitzgerald

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

I got into comedy because I wanted to get into writing. — Anthony Jeselnik

The rest of the morning would consist of checking on a pothole in the parking lot of the village clinic and writing up a schedule for the community centre that might finally settle the ongoing feud between the local quilting group and the bridge club.
It was good to be queen. — Molly Harper

We're having so much writing some of the sillier stuff that never would have been on Mr. Show. And that's not a knock on Mr. Show at all, because it's my favorite comedy show of all time. Even before I worked on it. It's just really refreshing to write something so stupid and say, "We gotta do that." — B. J. Porter

I am writing a play which I probably will not finish until the end of November. I am writing it with considerable pleasure, though I sin frightfully against the conventions of the stage. It is a comedy with three female parts, six male, four acts, a landscape (view of the lake), lots of talk on literature, little action and tons of love. — Anton Chekhov

Laughing made me feel safe. I was not going to be enveloped by the seediness that coated this world like dust. — Joan Rivers

When writing comedy, you have to have the confidence to believe that there is only one type of relationship in the world, and we are all having it, that all men behave in the same way and so do all women. — Steven Moffat

My acting has always been in the world of comedy, but in my writing, other than writing sketches, I really am drawn to the balance between comedy and drama. I like things that sort of toe that line of one minute you're in this emotional space and then all of the sudden something happens. — Jim Rash

The secret of writing comedy is to know where it's all going, then get ahead of it. — Robert Orben

One thing we do really well on Archer and one thing I've always tried to do in my comedy and my writing and my podcast is to never speak down to my audience. — Aisha Tyler

Writing, acting, music, comedy. A deep love of literature and books. Thank God for all the artists who've helped me. — Bill Hicks

I had my own insecurities, which a lot of my comedy would come from, about not being able to live up to their academic expectations. Acting out those insecurities was a way of confronting them, like, "Let me just lean into being a guy who can't read or write." — Charlie Day

I'm not a comedy writer, I'm a comedian, so I only write stuff that I would want to say. — Anthony Jeselnik

For about a whole month, at least, whenever anybody said anything that sounded campusy or phony, or that smelled to high heaven of ego or something like that, I at least kept quiet about it. I went to the movies or I stayed in the library all hours or I started writing papers like made on Restoration Comedy and stuff like that - but at least I had the pleasure of not hearing my own voice for a while. — J.D. Salinger

You really have no idea whether or not what you're writing is funny. In stand-up and sketch comedy, you know right away and you can make your changes accordingly. — Michael Showalter

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 writing is taking the brief thought and going with it. — Chris O'Dowd

There is a whole genre of funny travel writers - that's very popular. There's Bill Bryson and people who follow that route and sell travel writing through making people laugh. It's a very difficult group to take. The line between comedy and mockery is sometimes a bit thin. — John Gimlette

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

Does talking to yourself in the voice of your fictional character count as being social? — Michelle M. Pillow

I just always wrote songs as a side hobby. So it was sort of a natural thing to write comedy songs. But when I started writing songs, I wrote very serious songs. Or things that a 13-14 year-old would think are very serious issues. — Kyle Dunnigan

Humor is so subjective, not everyone is going to get what you are peddling. Others will be offended when what you meant no offense whatsoever. Those are the stakes. You have to be able to stand up for yourself and what you've written. Comedy pushes limits, makes people uncomfortable, and is a natural reaction to the environment. Otherwise, as I said, it is forced. Let it flow and give your characters permission to cross a line or two, but only if you can take the heat afterward. — Darynda Jones

Like all teenagers in the early '60s, I put down my hockey stick when the Beatles got big and picked up a guitar. We all thought we'd be rock stars. Then I got into comedy, but I'd always find a way to use my guitar, such as writing songs and doing musical parodies. — Rick Moranis

It always seems to someone outside the business that it is very difficult to write for a comedy show because it must be done quickly. Actually, it is much easier to write this humor than to do a joke or a show from scratch, because the audience knows the plot. Just mention what is going on and then deliver the punch line. — Robert Orben

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

Comedy is more difficult than drama. I think it's really difficult to make someone laugh because people have very different comedic sensibilities. In drama, you can get away with being a great actor and surrounded by great actors and having good writing. But in comedy you have to listen and you have to perform with a certain rhythm, because if you don't, it's like playing a wrong note in the orchestra and you can hear the off key and it will fall flat and you won't get that instant response. — Aimee Garcia

Liked" was the kiss of death. "Loved" or "hated" interested him. At least the performer had aroused emotion. — Joan Rivers

I'm writing a record of comedy songs. I'm doing all these collaborations with artists. I bring them lyrics and they write the music to it. — Margaret Cho

In his Comedy, Dante Alighieri names Virgil, with many tokens of respect, as his teacher, and yet as Herr Meinhard remarks, makes such ill use of him: clear proof that even in the days of Dante one praised the ancients without knowing why. This respect for poets one does not understand and yet wishes to equal is the source of the bad writing in our literature. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

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 got written out of 'G.I. Joe' and was like, 'Welp, I'm going to go back to what I do: writing and producing comedy.' — Marlon Wayans

I wish I was writing something much more heavy each time I did a film, and that the comedies just occasionally come out. But unfortunately you're stuck with what you're born with. — Woody Allen

Tragedy massages the human ego even as comedy deflates it ... Tragedy pits us against large foes and the trip wire is our own character ... In comedy we fall afoul of one another. Comedy depends on social life, on our behavior in groups. In tragedy you can observe one human against the gods. In comedy it's one human versus other humans and often one man (or woman if I'm writing it) against her own worst impulses. — Rita Mae Brown

If Dante was writing The Divine Comedy in 2013, he might very well have set part of it in the suburbs. — Joshua Mohr

After 9/11, I changed a lot of the ways I viewed the world. I realized my comedy and my politics and my view of the world did not match. I had to start writing from my heart. — Hari Kondabolu

Breaking records is not something you expect to be doing. That's like a sports thing, it's not usually a comedy and writing thing. — Louis C.K.

Everyone who has ever met me for at least five minutes knows I'm a really funny person. I love to laugh and to make people laugh, so writing comedy comes naturally to me. — Simone Elkeles

Having had virtually no contact with the outside world for the last few weeks, Evan had temporarily forgotten the social norms governing shopping conduct or approaching celebrities in public. — Zack Love

I love acting but I also love writing, especially comedy. — Sally Hawkins

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

I said, "Is there!" I told him there is a Mafia school where they teach them math - if Johnny has ten fingers and they cut off two, how many does he have left? — Joan Rivers

When I graduated, I was director of my school's sketch comedy group, and I knew that I wanted to be writing and performing my own sketch comedy. It kind of made me want to do my own one-person sketch group. — Rachel Bloom

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

The act of creation fascinates me. You can only sit with blank page and wait. You cannot press a button, cannot program it. — Joan Rivers

What you want to do is talk about ideas, you write a novel, you have a lecture about those ideas. Satire and comedy are really the only film mediums where you can get into ideas and have people leave the theater without being moralized. — Justin Simien

Every time I think about writing, comedy doesn't interest me in the slightest. I can play comedy, but I don't think in terms of comic dialogue. — Jim Parsons

I don't see much comedy in the Bible, where people are writing about funny people. It's not there. — Bill Cosby

I was supposed to write a romantic comedy, but my characters broke up. — Ann Brashares

With comedy, I think it's so important, especially in TV, to know and trust what the writers are writing and just have it down. — Jay Harrington

But this month is all about CITY OF JASMINE which I hope you already have in your hot little hands. My favorite review snippet? KIRKUS REVIEWS said it's "part screwball comedy".
I can't tell you how much time I spent with Carole Lombard and William Powell and Irene Dunne when I was writing it. I adore the 30s comedies for their light-hearted take on relationships and adventure - and the glamorous settings and occasional dash of intrigue only heighten the magic. (Did you know that Nicholas Brisbane from my Lady Julia series was named for THE THIN MAN's Nick Charles? And apologies to Dashiell Hammett, but I fell in love with the film long before I read the book and appreciated how much it had been lightened in the adaptation!) So when you're reading CITY OF JASMINE, give some thought to who you'd like to see playing Evie and Gabriel - I'd love to hear who you'd cast in your own production. — Deanna Raybourn

I challenged myself to write/direct a romantic comedy. People trash talk the rom com, but it's one of the oldest cinematic genres, with stellar origins like Twentieth Century and Trouble in Paradise. I think as audiences lost their innocence, the genre lost its suspense. To create suspense, you need obstacles, so I gave my couple an obstacle that very few people ever overcome: their own behavior and their past. — Leslye Headland

I do not need to hear people tearing into Lisa Lampanelli for liking to have sex only with black men. I'm sad that this is her famous running gag. I'm sad that I now know this. I'm sad that a legitimate rung on the ladder of making it in comedy is writing hateful stuff about total strangers. I don't know. — Mindy Kaling

I love '30 Rock.' It's one of my favorite shows. It's certainly the gold standard of comedy writing. — Dan Harmon

The Divine Comedy is a political poem and when you say poetry is not about - he's always quoted out of context, that "poetry makes nothing happen," that doesn't mean you shrug your shoulders and don't try to make anything happen. And Dante felt that poetry was engaged, there was a point of view; it's not my point of view, it's orthodox medieval Christianity, and I have my troubles with that. He didn't feel that you could just rule out so important a section of life - we care about these things, and it's out of caring about them that we write poetry. — W.S. Merwin

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

To call that writing, madam, is an insult to quills and ink across the world. — Julia Quinn

I am not a politician going around bragging about family values or putting myself on some ridiculous virtuous pedestal. I write comedy. And I am an actor. I am not going to solve the nation's problems. I don't actually spend my life in the way the tabloids like to think I do. I actually spend 95 percent of it writing comedy. Sober. Well, nearly sober anyway. — Steve Coogan

Good girls like myself need subversion. Being solemn, I aspire to comedy. Being a novelist, I aspire to the musical. Being organized, I aspire to luminous chaos. Loving the power of grammar and the fine distinctions of language, I seek the part of the mind I didn't know was there, the part 'sheer,' 'no-manfathomed,' 'cliffs of fall. — Janet Burroway

I think that's part of being a comedy writer. You have to be confident. If you're sitting around worrying about, like, oh my God, what are people going to think, then you're not writing comedy. You have to write what makes you laugh, and then the world hopefully laughs as well. — David Mandel

HARV, can you help at all here?" I asked, spinning downward.
"I am writing your obituary. Well, not so much writing it as updating it," HARV told me.
If I lived, I was going to kill HARV. — John Zakour

I was completely unqualified to get into Harvard. But then I went to my interview for Harvard, and the woman asked, 'Why do you want to go here?' And I took out all of my comedy writing samples that I had done. I couldn't have been more delusional in terms of what I thought they wanted in a candidate for college. — Mike Birbiglia

I'm not saying writing comedy's brain surgery, but there is a certain pressure to it. It's the equivalent of doing homework that's going to end up on national television. — Miranda Hart

The spectacle of a judge pouring over the picture of some nude, trying to ascertain the extent to which she arouses prurient interests, and then attempting to write an opinion which explains the difference between that nude and some other nude has elements of low comedy. — Thurman Arnold

I always wanted to write, even before I realized that there was a comedy writers' world, or what that life was like. I never thought of myself, at least as a little kid, in terms of being the onscreen talent. I always thought it'd be so much fun to write sketches and be a writer. Even as little as 6 or 7, that's what my main interest was. — Mindy Kaling

And as their penile pain began to subside, the two men were able to form more complex thoughts, resulting in a collaborative work: the development of a worldview that might be described as penilosophy. — Zack Love

I have admired Melissa Pritchard's writing for several years now for its wisdom, its humble elegance, and its earthy comedy. — Rick Moody

I'm afraid that the act of writing is so scary and anxiety-filled that I never laugh at all. In fact, when people tell me that such and such a scene or story is comical, I tend to gape. I did not intend comedy - ever, as far as I know. It's probably all a mistake. I am essentially a lugubrious writer. Ha ha! — Cynthia Ozick

I'm writing a political comedy that takes place in Canada in Quebec. It's funny. Saying political comedy is a little redundant but it's a first. I've never done any comedy per se. — Philippe Falardeau

'Writing' always means 'not writing' to me because I will do anything to put it off. I think this is mainly because writing anything down and then handing it over to a third party - especially in comedy - is such an exposing act that you naturally want to delay the process. — Catherine Tate

Can I speak to Sayvyer, please?"
"You're looking for the savior? At 1:15 a.m.?"
"No. her name's Sayvyer."
"There's no savior here. Especially not at 1:15 a.m. — Zack Love

The Lampoon was definitely quite formative. You know there's a crazy like kind of network of comedy writers from The Lampoon that are, that kind of you know like Seinfeld and The Simpsons and a lot of shows kind of had a lot of kind of Lampoon writers and so that was very formative. I mean, to me I got interested in comedy writing at an early like reading like Dave Barry. — Nicholas Stoller

My partner after Fred Freeman was Jerry Belson. And Jerry Belson, after I was doing so well writing situation comedy, said, this is not good enough. We got to create our own shows. I said, but we're very happy doing this. No, no, no, you got to get your own show. So he made me - and he and I created our own shows. And we actually - everything we created failed. "Hey, Landlord" was our first show - 99th in the ratings. But imagine this - it's a great reflection on the years. — Garry Marshall

A good comedy's very hard to make, so good comic writing I really enjoy. — Colm Meaney

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

If Shakespeare were alive today and writing comedy for the movies, he would be the head-liner for the Mack Sennett studios. — Robert Benchley

But we [writers] are crucial. That is what I hope you have learned. We listen for and collect and share stories. Without stories there is no nation and no religion and no culture. Without stories of bone and substance and comedy there is only a river of lies, and sweet and delicious ones they are, too. We are the gatherers, the shepherds, the farmers of stories. We wander widely and look for them and gather them and harvest them and share them as food. It is a craft as necessary and nutritious as any other, and if you are going to be good at it you must double your humility and triple your curiosity and quadruple your ability to listen. — Brian Doyle

Both law and comedy are heavily focused on thought and viewing all angles. To write a good joke, you have to look at a premise every way possible. And with a good legal argument, you have to see all sides to get the best line of argument for your client. Law school made me a better comic, and comedy has made me a better public speaker. — Troy Walker

I really like comedy. There's always a choice, when you're writing: you can either go for the joke or you can go for the story, the important stuff. — David Chase

And if you have great writing, it's really easy, but if it's not so great and you have to work a little harder, I could tell where the work needed to be done but comedy is just fun. — Matt LeBlanc

Poetry is only the highest eloquence of passion, the most vivid form of expression that can be given to our conception of anything, whether pleasurable or painful, mean or dignified, delightful or distressing. It is the perfect coincidence of the image and the words with the feeling we have, and of which we cannot get rid in any other way, that gives an instant "satisfaction to the thought." This is equally the origin of wit and fancy, of comedy and tragedy, of the sublime and pathetic. — William Hazlitt

I know this is going to sound very self-serving, and I apologize for it, but if you can write comedy, you can pretty much write anything, because it's the hardest. It's the most technically demanding, the most precisely evaluated form of writing. People know if it works or not. There's a big button marked 'fail,' and that's when nobody laughs. — Steven Moffat

As an author I'm in my head all day and I worry that I lose touch with reality. But then my dog pees on my shoe and I know I've found it again. — Michelle M. Pillow

Some of the subject matter is a little less weighty. When we were writing for Mr. Show, we were talking about how is this going to stand up to the test of time. Every little piece had to be this brilliant comedy jewel. — B. J. Porter