Noah Hawley Quotes

I've always been drawn to discomfort and that limbo of unease you get between comedy and tragedy. Making people laugh one moment and the next making them feel really uncomfortable.

Comedy defends the commonplace; tragedy explodes it.

Happy ending are only a pause. There are three kinds of big endings: Revenge. Tragedy. Forgiveness. Revenge and Tragedy often happen together. Forgiveness redeems the past. Forgiveness unblocks the future.

I think you can tell the human condition better through comedy.

I've always been drawn to discomfort and that limbo of unease you get between comedy and tragedy.

Sometimes in the most tragic situation, something just profoundly funny happens.

Shakespeare is the outstanding example of how that can be done. In all of Shakespeare's plays, no matter what tragic events occur, no matter what rises and falls, we return to stability in the end.

Violent drama has been a hallmark of every great civilization. It is not the cause of the disease - it is an immunizing factor. People go to the theater to experience emotions like fear and loathing. Violent drama shows us where we come from. It makes us face our hypocrisy.

I used to think 'King Lear' was an analysis of insanity, but I don't really think it is. When Lear is supposed to be at his most insane, he is actually understanding the world for the first time.

I am a passionate believer that comedy is a way of tackling some of the most dark and difficult aspects of being a human being.

The difference between tragedy and comedy: Tragedy is something awful happening to somebody else, while comedy is something awful happening to somebody else.

My life was on the line here and my career and everything I worked for, it was hanging by a thread.

Why do we laugh at such terrible things? Because comedy is often the sarcastic realization of inescapable tragedy.

Tension is all about, 'Why is this taking so long?' The interesting thing about that is that it's also the tension of comedy. The tension of drama and comedy is similar, and that's why usually you can get a big laugh in a really tense moment because people need that release.

But I don't think there has ever been anything written on the nature of violent man as deep and as thorough as Shakespeare's Titus. I think it puts all modern movies and modern exploitations of violence to shame.

For me comedy and violence has a lot in common. Just as you expect, comedy always lurks behind the most unexpected of circumstances.

Tragedy without comedy is melodrama, and comedy without a higher purpose is vacant.

All the great Shakespeare plays are about killing. 'Alas, poor Yorick,' that's about death. And in 'Romeo and Juliet' everyone up ends up dying. The greatest dramas in the world are all about sex, violence and death.

All people are sad clowns. That's the key to comedy - and it's a buffer against reality.

I think of everything as comedy, but I don't think of it in terms of sitcom comedy, I think of it in terms of Chekhov comedy. Chekhov called his plays comedies. There's always a mixture of a laugh with sadness. So the plie to the laugh is sadness.

I'm interested in morality and mortality, and 'Deadpool' kind of has all of these themes.

I think a joke is a form of truth-telling. A good joke that's absurd contains elements of our daily darkness and also a possibility to escape that darkness. So, for me, humor is an attempt to capture everyday tragedy and everyday hopeful moments that we experience all of the time.

For me, a story always goes out of a mistake. Somebody makes a mistake, and that becomes the story. Probably that explains why my series are kind of dark: because there's a problem to begin with.

Handling a painful situation in a comedic way is truly the funniest. That is extremely real to me and not kind of clownish. There is a thin line though; you can't overdo it.

When the bad bleeds, then is the tragedy good.