Chuck Palahniuk Quotes

I think it's almost easier to make people cry than to make people laugh.

No one - apart from my agent, perhaps - should leave one of my shows in tears.

I remember once having to stop performing when I thought an elderly man a few rows back from the front was actually going to die because he was laughing so hard.

My favorite moments are the moments everyone cries over. I see people in the audience crying, and I go, 'I did that, too. I don't just do the jokes. I also do the cries.' Jokes and cries, jokes and cries. That's all I'm here for, people.

It's such a great feeling to make people laugh. I know I've made people cry or want to slit their wrists, but to make people laugh is a very intoxicating, wonderful thing.

If you are a great dramatic actor then you often don't know if people are enjoying your stuff at all because they are sitting there in silence. But with comedy it's a simple premise. If it's funny, people laugh. If it's not, they don't.

Humor is the secret into the audience's other ranges of emotions.

I'm kinda rather make people laugh I guess or cry or whatever but bragging about what I have for me personally uncharacteristic I guess.

It's quite easy to make a load of people laugh, it's often a reflex action, but I think to make them cry is harder without manipulating them.

The men loved jokes, though they had heard each one before. Jack's manner was persuasive; few of them had seen the old stories so well delivered. Jack himeself laughed a little, but he was able to see the effect his performance had on his audience. The noise of their laughter roared like the sea in his ears. He wanted it louder and louder; he wanted them to drown out the war with their laughter. If the could should loud enough, they might bring the world back to its senses; they might laugh loud enough to raise the dead.

It's much easier to make people cry than to laugh.

Making people laugh is one of the highest achievements you can have. And when you can make someone laugh and cry, alternatively, as Chaplin does - now that's the highest of all personal achievements. I don't know that I aim for it, but I recognize it as the supreme goal.

Most people laugh at situations rather than a tagline anyway.

When you need a good laugh, do you reach for a book? I don't. I expect books to move me deeply and submerge me in another reality. So when a novel makes me roar with laughter, it's always a delightful surprise.

In comedy, though, it's good to get feedback from the audience about what they find funny.

Jackie Gleason said that comedy is the most exacting form of dramatic art, because it has an instant critic: laughter.

Comedy is such a personal thing. Everybody can cry at the same thing, but it's a lot harder to get everyone to laugh at the same thing.

The audience likes their emotions to be touched. They want to laugh and cry and feel good.

Everybody wants to laugh - you know that. They need to laugh... people need to laugh.

The test of a real comedian is whether you laugh at him before he opens his mouth.

I think I would say 'The King's Speech' is surprisingly funny, in fact the audiences in London, Toronto, LA, New York commented there's more laughter in this film than in most comedies, while it is also a moving tear-jerker with an uplifting ending.

If I get a hard audience they are not going to get away until they laugh. Those seven laughs a minute - I've got to have them.

For me, the great joy is to watch an audience watching what I've made. To hear not a peep from the audience at the right moment, and then to hear the laughs and the cheers.

If you became a comedian in the '80s, you had to work the circuit and make people laugh. Canned laughter is cheating.

In 'Malvolio,' the audience laugh at me, and I use that laughter to crack open the question as to why they are laughing.