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Comedy Quotes
"All the jokes in my films, the comedy, they're not me, I just try to hold a big mirror up to us."
93
"You know, stand-up comedy is where I pretty much started out."
87
"I own four copies of Robin WIlliams's Live on Broadway comedy special for HBO. One in Wilmington, one in L.A., one in my trailer, and one at my parents' house. I can watch it over and over again and it never gets old. He is the funniest, wittiest man on the planet!"
84
"Every student of comedy should see Dame Edna at least twice."
84
"After the Rodgers and Hammerstein revolution, songs became part of the story, as opposed to just entertainments in between comedy scenes."
76
"The English never smash in a face. They merely refrain from asking it to dinner."
76
"There is no essential difference between the material of comedy and tragedy. All depends on the point of view of the dramatist, which, by clever emphasis, he tries to make the point of view of his audience."
75
"Comedy is exaggerated realism. It can be stretched to the almost ludicrous, but it must always be believable."
74
"The human comedy is always tragic, but since its ingredients are always the same - dupe, fox, straight, like burlesque skits - the repetition through the ages is comedy."
71
"One always writes comedy at the moment of deepest hysteria."
67
"The difference between tragedy and comedy: Tragedy is something awful happening to somebody else, while comedy is something awful happening to somebody else."
66
"We participate in a tragedy; at a comedy we only look."
66
"In tragedy every moment is eternity; in comedy, eternity is a moment."
65
"Someone I've always admired is Catherine O'Hara... I think she's one of the best actresses in the country, not only comedy. I just think she's just a step aside from everybody, she's just wonderful."
65
"I think so. I can't think of anything that requires more finesse than comedy, both from a verbal and visual point of view."
64
"I would like to do maybe a smaller romantic comedy."
62
"If you want good sketches, go pick up Sid Caesar. The best of Your Show of Shows. That's the greatest sketch comedy you'll ever see on television."
61
"Without comedy as a defense mechanism I wouldn't be able to survive."
59
"We were the only ones interested in comedy. Everybody else wanted to be Martin Scorsese."
59
"Socialism is a fraud, a comedy, a phantom, a blackmail."
59
"All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl."
58
"Anyone can write. But comedy, you've got to do some writing. You get one comedy script to every 20 dramas."
58
"I am a big fan of the TV series Taxi which combined comedy and pathos better than any other show I've seen."
58
"A straight factor is important in any comedy, because you need something to tee it up and also to ground it."
57
"All I mean is, I'm not the kind of audience comedy directors want at a test screening because I seldom laugh, and if I do, it's not very loud. That doesn't mean I don't like the movie."
57
"I would recommend that anyone who wants to do comedy on TV to do radio first."
56
"Nobody should try to play comedy unless they have a circus going on inside."
56
"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."
56
"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."
54
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