Improvisational Comedy Quotes & Sayings

A lion among ladies is a most dreadful thing. — William Shakespeare

I had seen some shows at the Groundlings [legendary L.A. improvisational and sketch comedy troupe] and thought, "If I could ever do that, that would really mean something, that I have arrived." So I went through the program and said to myself, "I'm going to stay here until they kick me out." Seriously, they can ask you to leave at any point. Luckily, they never did that to me. — Wendi McLendon-Covey

With comedy, if you write something for me, I'm better at it. I'm not sure I'm so good at improvisational stuff. — Robert Knepper

Zach, we have to stop her!"
But Zach just held me. He looked at me with shock and awe and just a little bit of wonder. In spite of everything, I thought that he might laugh.
"Gallagher Girl," he told me, "you are the school. — Ally Carter

Ruth said, "Love isn't just wanting another person the way you want to own an object you see in a store. That's just desire. You want to have it around, take it home and set it up somewhere in the apartment like a lamp. Love is"-she paused, reflecting-"like a father saving his children from a burning house, getting them out and denying himself. When you love you cease to live for yourself; you live for another person. — Philip K. Dick

The writing process, the way I go about it is I do whatever the beat feels like, whatever the beat is telling me to do. Usually when the beat comes on, I think of a hook or the subject I want to rap about almost instantly. Within four, eight bars of it playing I'm just like, 'Oh, OK. This is what I wanna do'. — Eminem

This is why improvisational music and comedy is so inspiring: You are seeing something being born, and that energy, there is no substitute for. These songs, most of them, are about a minute old when you hear them. — John Darnielle

Paranoia is at most annoying! — Anthony Liccione

Whenever there is stillness there is the still small voice, God's speaking from the whirlwind, nature's old song, and dance ... — Annie Dillard

'Saturday Night Live' was actually started with a show that Lorne Michaels and I did at a summer camp called Timberlane in Ontario when we were 14 and 15. We would do an improvisational show with music, comedy and acting. — Howard Shore

Discord among the ex-Soviet nationalities was fuelling an ugly brand of Russian nationalism. Voices in Moscow called for the re-conquest of Russia's 'near abroad'. For after Abkhazia, there waited several further targets for Russian intervention, including Tatarstan and Chechenia, and other non-Russian lands within the Russian Federation. Sooner or later, Russia would be forced to choose between its new-style democracy and its old-style imperialism. — Norman Davies

This is the secret of success for anywhere in the world, not just the monastery," he says, and then goes on to describe pretty much word for word the first rule of improvisational comedy, or for that matter any successful collaborative enterprise. Take whatever is thrown at you and build upon it. "Yes ... and" rather than "No ... but. — Michael Lewis

What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms. What I touch, what resists me
that is what I understand. And these two certainties
my appetite for the absolute and for unity and the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle
I also know that I cannot reconcile them. What other truth can I admit without lying, without bringing in a hope which I lack and which means nothing within the limits of my condition? — Albert Camus

The only thing man has never done is what he hasn't thought about. — Richmond Akhigbe

When comedy is good, it's jazz. The beats of it, the looseness, the improvisational part, the music-the way you hit the inflection, the high notes of a joke. It's all melody to me. — Billy Crystal

The softminded person always wants to freeze the moment and hold life in the gripping yoke of sameness. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Everything, in fact, recalled him to me, as though he'd left the whole world to me in his will. — Michael Chabon

If you had a personal trainer, you would probably eat him. I know that in every fat person, there's a skinny person inside, but you could have all the season's contestants of America's Next Top Model in you. I hope I get reincarnated as your feet. That way, you'd never see my face again ... Oh, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have insulted you. Because in my country, cows are sacred. — George Lopez

Chris Guest is the godfather of improvisational comedy. — Tom Bennett

We have progressed so far that we have succeeded in tearing the atom apart; but to reach that point we may also have had to regress in our moral vision of the physical world to a level barely above the insentient. — David Bentley Hart

I am in favor of helping the prosperity of all countries because, when we are all prosperous, the trade with each becomes more valuable to the other. — William Howard Taft

Environmental activism against the resource industry is widespread all over the world, but at the same time we have to realise that these are basic materials on which civilisation depends. We need to tap natural resources in a sustainable manner. — Anil Agarwal