Truth In Comedy Quotes & Sayings

Don't get me wrong, there are sometimes if I go and see a really funny comedy, that I wished I had smoked a joint. I'll be honest with you. That's the truth. — Stephen Baldwin

Let the preacher tell the truth. Let him make audible the silence of the news of the world with the sound turned off so that in the silence we can hear the tragic truth of the Gospel, which is that the world where God is absent is a dark and echoing emptiness; and the comic truth of the Gospel, which is that it is into the depths of his absence that God makes himself present in such unlikely ways and to such unlikely people that old Sarah and Abraham and maybe when the time comes even Pilate and Job and Lear and Henry Ward Beecher and you and I laugh till the tears run down our cheeks. And finally let him preach this overwhelming of tragedy by comedy, of darkness by light, of the ordinary by the extraordinary, as the tale that is too good not to be true because to dismiss it as untrue is to dismiss along with it that catch of the breath, that beat and lifting of the heart near to or even accompanied by tears, which I believe is the deepest intuition of truth that we have. — Frederick Buechner

I realised that all one really had to do was just observe. Observe and slightly exaggerate, and you had comedy. Instead of creating a mythical premise for a stupid joke, I found playing off truth got the best result. — Mel Brooks

Comedy has to be based on truth. You take the truth and you put a little curlicue at the end. — Sid Caesar

But when he sat down for a moment on the bed, all the comedy of it was snatched away and torn to pieces. He was wrong about the woman's expression: he was trying to transform it into something he could bear. The truth was probably far different. He had started out to see what had happened with her eyes and had ended by substituting his own, thus contriving to put her on his side. — Saul Bellow

I try to measure the amount of truth in a work rather than just looking at the generic distinction between comedy and drama. — Harold Ramis

I gulped. But, I mean, everyone bends the truth sometimes to be friendly. What's really weird is that I'm the only one who seems to get in trouble for it. Anyway, what could possibly go wrong this time? — Sue Wyshynski

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

What reaches an audience is honesty. If you're saying something truthful that's supposed to be a funny line, it's going to be funny. And if it's supposed to be a serious line, it's going to be serious. But, I don't think there's a distinction between how you play drama or comedy, if it's based in the truth. — Barbra Streisand

You want me to pin my entire operation, the entire revolution on some teenaged love story? I can't believe this. — Victoria Aveyard

Spies have the same kinds of needs and desires that everybody does, which is funny. The best kind of comedy derives from that kind of truth. — Matt Nix

The way I approach any role, whether it's comedy or drama, I like to look for the truth first. I think comedy for the sake of comedy wears dull pretty quickly. You have to ground the character in reality first and allow the audience to sympathize, emphasize and be more invested. — Matt McGorry

I think everything needs to be played real, for reality's sake, for truth. And that is the drama and the comedy. When you do that, it's funnier. And when you do that, you really do hit the emotional beats. I do it the same way as I do a drama. I just play it for truth, and then maybe have a little bit of fun with it sometimes. — Jennifer Lopez

I'm sorry. The Truth is....

I'm an Otaku.

- Serinuma Kae — Junko

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

Comedy is not supposed to be funny. Its supposed to tell the truth and then that's funny. — Paula Patton

My dad used to tell me that laughter was like a cough or a sneeze - the body's way of trying to expel something. But instead of some phlegm in your throat, or some dust up your nose, a laugh happened when something really true got into your brain. Something so true that your system just couldn't stand it. — J. Ross Clara

The truth is what we say it is ... prove to me this desk is not a cow! — Ray S. Jones

I try to do women's-point-of-view comedy. The joke is, 'This is what I think; there's the truth.' I try to think of stuff that's real broad, but the more personal it is, the more universal it is. All my friends go through the same stuff. — Roseanne Barr

Comedy is a way to make sense of chaos. It's a way of dealing with things that are overwhelming, that threaten you; it's a way to survive and get closer to the truth. — Laura Linney

I definitely prefer working in comedy over drama, but at the same time, when it comes to comedy, I tend to prefer comedies that have a great sense of truth to them and that come from an honest place. — Fiona Gubelmann

I'm not ashamed to tell the truth about what happened in my family. I think that's what makes my comedy different. — Bernie Mac

And you know, whether it's drama or comedy, the best work is based on truth. It's just that, with comedy, the circumstances are just crazy-heightened, and you have these crazy things thrown at you. But you still have to do it truthfully, because that's where the humor comes from. So it's not that difficult to cross over. — Tony Hale

The magic of boy meets girl, the angst of catch and release, the serendipity of meant-to-be, It doesn't matter if a romantic comedy follows a predictable course, we respond because it's rooted in truth. In magic. — Victoria Van Tiem

You can bring truth to anything, whether it's a dance movie or an incredibly poignant indie drama or a really broad comedy. As long as you show up to play, I don't think you can go wrong. — Josh Peck

I've always been taught to just play the truth of the situation. If comedy comes out of that, or drama, whatever comes out of it, at least I'm playing the truth of the moment-to-moment reality. — Ving Rhames

In order for comedy to be funny you have to play the truth of the moment. But if you're not being completely truthful to the basis of the character, its not going to be funny. — Stephen Root

A life without trouble and tragedy is boring and not a plot for comedy. — Debasish Mridha

Your highness, when I said that you are like a stream of bat's piss, I only mean that you shine out like a shaft of gold when all around it is dark — Graham Chapman

I'm still fighting really hard to get any role I get. If it's comedy, I go for the laughs. And if it's drama, I try to tell the truth, and try to play the real stakes of whatever scenario the character's in. — Chris Pratt

The truth is like sunlight: It causes cancer. — J. Richard Singleton

I hate to force anything. A lot of people say that comedy is twenty percent truth, and eighty percent fallacy. I believe that you have to have lived through something to write about it. — Tone Bell

In good comedy, the structure comes from truth and that weird eye that looks at the way life is. — Ciaran Hinds

It's a dangerous game that comedy plays. Sometimes it tells you the truth; sometimes it delays it. — Elvis Costello

Comedy is funny when it comes from truth, and that's always the rule of them. It's about how far you can push that boundary. — Ari Graynor

For some reason, comedy just comes easily to me, and I feel like I can do it. I don't have any doubt. When I work on drama, there's always a sense of 'Did I find this person's truth at the bottom of this?' And it's hard to tell sometimes. — Andrea Anders

HELEN HAYES: "Which part of The Divine Comedy do you like the most, Tiziano?"
TIZIANO CONTI: "The fifth Canto."
HELEN HAYES: "The Hell, huh?"
TIZIANO CONTI: "L'inferno depicts the truth. — Merce Cardus

There's truth in comedy, and that resonates with people of all races. — Jessica Williams

You know, comedy's hard. With drama, you have a responsibility to the emotional truth, but with comedy, you have emotional truth and you have technique on top of it. — Julianne Moore

Of all funny things, truth is the funniest. — Neel Burton

I am trying to work out what my taste is, comedy-wise. I look up to stand up comedians who appear to be telling the truth, but I don't mind if they are lying. — Jessie Cave

The best comedy to me - and again, I grew up with comedy since I was a baby, so I've seen it all - is when you exaggerate the truth, like Richard Pryor did, you understand? — Pauly Shore

There is a misconception of tragedy with which I have been struck in review after review, and in many conversations with writers and readers alike. It is the idea that tragedy is of necessity allied to pessimism. Even the dictionary says nothing more about the word than that it means a story with a sad or unhappy ending. This impression is so firmly fixed that I almost hesitate to claim that in truth tragedy implies more optimism in its author than does comedy, and that its final result ought to be the reinforcement of the onlooker's brightest opinions of the human animal. — Arthur Miller

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

Through comedy, we can touch core societal beliefs and transform them completely. I believe we can get to the truth of some deep societal ideologies, and begin to transform them into a new understanding. Far too many promote hateful ideologies, and we must do much more to bring our cultures together, in love and peace. — Catherine Chen

The older I've gotten, the more the need to exert comedy no matter how tragic a character I may be portraying because they are essentials for presenting truth. — Ed Asner

My grandmother taught me that accomplishments meant less than what you left behind. I started to ask myself what impact my comedy would have on people's lives. And that changed my act. I got cleaner. I stopped talking about generic stuff like airplane peanuts and started speaking the truth about my gift. — Sherri Shepherd

As a writer, I was deliberately creating an alternate world, and then populating it with experiences and people that I knew in this world, but I'd shake up the mix considerably. And about the same time that the memoir was becoming the dominant popular literary form in the mid to late 90s, I started reading writers who were deliberately playing with the notion of "truth" and "fiction" - that struck me as a much more interesting way to tell certain stories, particularly in the realm of comedy. — Kevin Keck

There are a couple of things I want to impart to ladies who want to be in comedy: One, you don't have to be weird or be quirky to get your job done. And two, comedy skill is not sexually transmittable. You do not have to sleep with a comedian to learn what you're doing. Male comedians will not like that advice, but it is the truth. — Tina Fey

I'm not playing a comedy. I want to be playing the truth of the moment, and then have the comedy come out. — Zooey Deschanel

They're so broke that they've actually cut essential services. In many places, they've cut policemen, because, who the fuck needs them? Or firemen, son of a bitch, it's much more fun watching something burn down. — Lewis Black

An old mind is a thing to fear
The truth, in its purest form is boring
Through comedy, a person can hide his/her shortcomings and reach high ground. — Alberto A. Arcia

The two things I understand best are stand-up comedy and martial arts. And those things require an ultimate grasp of the truth. You have to be objective about your skills and abilities to compete in both. — Joe Rogan

I let the comedy come through the character and just try to make sure that everything is kind of rounded in a truth, in a reality, because that's what I need to make a character work. — Eugene Levy

To tell you the truth, I always wanted to be a sketch comedian and a comedy actor. — Artie Lange

When you get down to it, at it's root, Comedy is truth, absurdity, and pain. One of my little mottos is: 'Do you remember the Peanuts cartoon where Charlie Brown kicked the football and kissed the Little Red Haired Girl? Neither do I.' — Lev Yilmaz

Comedy is the ultimate truth. Jazz is hitting the notes that that no one else would hit, and comedy is saying words that no one else would say. — Tommy Chong

The truth is, I've never thought of myself as the Michael Jordan of comedy. And that's a good thing. You know why? Because I'm not. Wasn't that Richard Pryor? Yes, it was. I know what I am: I'm funny! — Tracy Morgan

I sat down on the sofa, surrounded by years of coffee rings and sandwich stains. If the police ever did a DNA test on this sofa, it would be ninety per cent disappointment. — Danny Wallace

I think great humor lies in playing the truth of a situation. I see myself as a performer and that applies to a Greek drama or a modern comedy. — Brendan Coyle

The preacher speaks both the word of tragedy and the word of comedy because they are both of them the truth and because Jesus speaks them both ... — Frederick Buechner

Comedy is a blood sport. It flays the truth and spurts twisted logic. In America, people become comics because we don't have bullfighting. — Elayne Boosler

Comedy is truth. We should not apologize for it. — Joan Rivers

Comedy is an escape, not from truth but from despair; a narrow escape into faith. — Christopher Fry

If I'm saying a universal truth, but maybe it's something that people don't feel comfortable saying ... It's a strange take, but at the same time, what you're hitting on is kind of right. You can relate. That's the heart of comedy. You have to have a point of view. You gotta commit. And the more you commit to it, sometimes the funnier it gets. — Vince Vaughn

I feel the freedom of being able to find comedy in the darkest moments because it makes it way more interesting, I think. Otherwise, you're just cruising down a path that's been traveled millions of times. It's cool to find the strange truth in those moments. — Kevin Durand

No novel is anything, for the purposes either of comedy or tragedy, unless the reader can sympathise with the characters whose names he finds upon the pages. Let an author so tell his tale as to touch his reader's heart and draw his tears, and he has, so far, done his work well. Truth let there be, --truth of description, truth of character, human truth as to men and women. If there be such truth, I do not know that a novel can be too sensational. — Anthony Trollope

The tapestry of history that seems so full of tragedy when viewed from the front has countless comic scenes woven into its reverse side. In truth, tragedy and comedy are the twin masks of history - its mass appeal. — Jose Ortega Y Gasset

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

A solid base for any comedy is just honesty and truth, and it coming from a real place. As surreal as this show gets and is, ultimately, we're dealing with a character that most can't see the way that I can see it. — Elijah Wood

Romantic comedies very rarely deal with washing your lover's dishes because she has to be up early for work, since no one wants to see the mundane truth when they can flip the channel to a desperate, emotionally-limited frottage. — Thomm Quackenbush

[Comedies], in the ancient world, were regarded as of a higher rank than tragedy, of a deeper truth, of a more difficult realization, of a sounder structure, and of a revelation more complete. The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man ... Tragedy is the shattering of the forms and of our attachments to the forms; comedy, the wild and careless, inexhaustible joy of life invincible. — Joseph Campbell