Lily Tomlin Quotes

You shouldn't get too close to the truth, because then maybe you stop being funny.

You can pretend to be serious; but you can't pretend to be witty.

I don't just try to be funny.

If you try to be funny, you're not being funny.

Funny is when you're serious.

There's something very authentic about humor, when you think about it. Anybody can pretend to be serious. But you can't pretend to be funny.

I realized, dumb people don't know they're dumb. When people try to make me laugh and they try to be funny, that's when they lose me. I find a lot of comedy in honesty.

This is getting funny, but there ain't nobody laughing.

You can be funny and say what you mean; these ideas are not mutually exclusive. Some of the best jokes came from people who meant it. See: Pryor, Bruce, Carlin, etc.

Comedy is created when someone is trying very earnestly to do what he feels is the right thing to do at that moment.

Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.

Anybody can make jokes. But unless they come from conviction, and there's truth in them, you haven't nailed it. They aren't as funny as they could be, and they don't make a point.

I don't mind making jokes, but I don't want to look like one.

When you take a character seriously, there's more room for comedy because you're not aware of how absurd you are.

I don't see any division between the comic and the tragic. I feel like I'm writing about serious things, and humour is one of my tools. It's not contrived, just part of my world, part of the way things are to me.

I can't not write funny. It's literally the only way I know how to do it.

I've always been very upfront about the way I write, and I've always used the tools humorists use, such as exaggeration.

I have a fine sense of the ridiculous, but no sense of humor.

People often can't separate, or can't understand, that to be funny is to be serious; it's a way of pulling people in and not scaring them off. I think a lot of the funny stuff, underneath it, there's a deep anxiety going on.

I've heard too many times where people say that I'm this ultra-serious guy. In truth, I've got an extremely absurd sense of humor. I thrive on the absurd - I love it.

Humor is something that thrives between man's aspirations and his limitations. There is more logic in humor than in anything else. Because, you see, humor is truth.

Actually being funny is mostly telling the truth about things.

Humorists can never start to take themselves seriously. It's literary suicide.

True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt; its essence is love. It issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.

A lot of stars don't have a sense of humor.