Richard Schickel Quotes

Politics is much too serious to be taken too seriously; equally, there are many aspects of it so laughable as to be lamentable.

If nothing is serious anymore, then there's nothing to satirize.

You can't make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you're doing is recording it.

There is no place for a person like me in a world that only takes itself seriously. Satire is so necessary but fairly ineffective.

I don't take myself or the species too seriously. You have to laugh at everything.

The more serious the situation, the funnier the comedy can be. The greatest comedy plays against the greatest tragedy. Comedy is a red rubber ball and if you throw it against a soft, funny wall, it will not come back. But if you throw it against the hard wall of ultimate reality, it will bounce back and be very lively. Very, very few people understand this.

The best comedy is based on truth.

From my point of view, humour and irony include tragedy; they're two sides of the same coin.

I'll see something, and I'll go, 'Oh, wow, that's interesting,' because really, comedy comes from the truth.

I find heartbreaking stuff really funny.

I love Larry David's take on things in 'Seinfeld', which is that you shouldn't try to help people because it'll always put you into new situations which are unpleasant.

It's a grim business, this being funny. Every time you come up with a strong, satiric idea, the world tops it.

Some things are so tragic that you don't know what's funny in it, and some things are so ridiculous you don't know if it's worth talking about it.

Comedy actually works best when you're living in an OK world, and you are pointing out the hypocrisy in apathy.

I think it's amusing to watch a naive, well-meaning character kind of undo more cynical characters - kind of like watching Laurel and Hardy or Charlie Chaplin.

I love irony.

People say the comedy is so shocking, but if you read newspapers or look around generally - I mean, obviously I'm not writing about all the lovely things that there are, which I do see as well - but there is a lot of outrageousness around, slightly covered up. And obviously, it's fun to take that a little bit further.

I like dark humor. I think the world is very funny and tragic, and my photographs are basically dark Jewish humor.

When I'm writing a lyric, things can only get so serious before they start becoming humorous.

I like to laugh at dark things.

The comic novels I did when I was in my 20s had a harder edge - less sympathy for people. Or a sympathy that was harder to detect: Characters' foibles and obsessive bents were unrelenting, like caricatures.

Comedy characters that take themselves very seriously, but are actually fools, is so funny.

I've got a sick sense of humour, a dark sense of humour. I do care about things and care about people but there's another side to me.

I love taking something that is understood to be funny or charming or sweet or naive and instilling it with some degree of gravity.

Louie Anderson thinks my thing is the absurdness of reality. That's what we do on 'Portlandia' all the time. I try to bring that absurdness of reality to everything.