Jackie Mason Quotes

I remember being fascinated by the very nature of comedy from the age of 10; why is this funny, and that isn't?

I don't feel bad about the fact that I notice if a lot of people laugh at a comic, and think, 'That worked; I'll do things like that more.'

I don't think of myself as funny - I don't fill up a room with my humor... I would fail miserably as a stand-up comedian.

I don't watch any other comedy, I don't study stand-up as an art.

I've never written jokes. I mean, I'll write things on a piece of paper and riff on them onstage.

I had always been - everybody kind of likes comedy. I was very interested in comedy, beyond just liking it. I had friends that took apart radios; I wanted to take apart jokes.

Describing comic sensibility is near impossible. It's sort of an abstract silliness, that sometimes the joke isn't the star.

When I used to watch comedians with my dad, he laid it all out for me. He wanted to be a comedian himself, and he was so funny. We'd watch stand-up on TV, and he'd tell me the subtext of what they were saying.

I'm always trying to make myself laugh. I'm the most enthusiastic audience I'm likely to find, so if it doesn't make me smile then it probably won't work on you. The jokes that only make me shrug get cut.

What's great about having an audience is they can let you know what they don't think is funny, and you can just cut that out and keep trying.

I'll accept bad taste in a minute, as long as there's some great comedy minds and performances.

One always writes comedy at the moment of deepest hysteria.

And if you can offer an explanation as to why it doesn't work then you've got to the whole root of comedy.

I even get tired performing standup, which is normally a low-impact exercise in futility but looks hard the way I do it. That's why I take a lot of breaks, often stopping in the middle of a joke to catch my breath, or blame the crowd for not laughing before the punchline.

Louis CK knows that just because a joke is using space as a resource instead of something to be crammed like a hamper, this doesn't mean a story isn't happening.

I think when you dissect a joke too much, you have ruined whatever there is in comedy.

Comedy is so subjective, you know what I mean? To sit there and technically pick it apart is so stupid.

Half of the great comedians I've had in my shows and that I paid a lot of money to and who made my customers shriek were not only not funny to me, but I couldn't understand why they were funny to anybody.

I'm not the comedy police, but you watch a movie, and everyone's laughing, and then you shake it out, and you realize, 'There's no joke there!'

I never analyze stuff with comedy because it's boring. It makes you stop being funny. Just be who you are and do what you do, and you're either funny or you're not.

You can analyse a joke and say it's funny because this guy thought this was going to happen, and that happened, and it's surprising. But not all surprising things are funny.

Specifically in stand-up, I love jokes. I love short, structured ideas and a punchline.

Everyone tells me I need to do comedy. It's never something that crossed my mind, but to be able to do a true comedy and make people laugh, that would be great.

Rhythm and timing are so important in comedic acting.

You can't teach standup comedy. You can teach someone how to formulate a joke, but making it funny is different.