Dick Van Dyke Quotes

I don't know if I have actually good comedic timing. But I don't think I've worked at any timing. I think timing is probably something you can't work at. Well, I don't know. I definitely didn't work at it.

The timing of comedy is so difficult. You've got to leave room for a laugh, you don't want to kill the laugh, but on film, you can't just suddenly stop for a laugh and then carry on. So, I think it's a real art form, comedy on film.

Let's not call physical comedy falling down and pratfalls. All humor is physical, no matter how you dish it out. It's timing, like a dancer or an athlete would have.

I think comedy is one of the hardest things to pull off. You either have timing or you don't, and that's something I don't have for sure.

I'd rather try and cram in another two gags than leave a pause to say, 'Hey, wasn't that bit funny?'

With 'Trainwreck,' because it wasn't live and we could do more takes, I feel like we broke a lot.

One joke coming from one person can land completely flat, while somebody else delivering it in a unique way can really elevate it.

Just because you're laughing, it doesn't mean the audience will, necessarily.

Like hitting a baseball, comedy is very much about timing. To some degree, you either 'got it or you don't.'

In television, there are so many things between you making a joke and the audience seeing it. It's like an assault course.

Comedy is the toughest. If it goes little bit here and there, and your partner doesn't cover up for you, then everything can go wrong.

I don't think of any sentence as a "one-liner", but I do pay attention to how people actually speak when they are being funny. Rhythm is key.

A joke is like building a mousetrap from scratch. You have to work pretty hard to make the thing snap when it is supposed to snap.

I think Georges Feydeau said comedy is just tragedy speeded up.

The best joke-tellers are those who have the patience to wait for conversation to come around to the point where the jokes in their repertoire have application.

I like trying jokes and seeing the response, and if I end up doing it in my act, it won't be 140 characters. Twitter is helpful that way to me. It's like a message in a bottle. But a lot of times I think I tweet the stuff I would like to say to teenage me.

I think the possibility of continuing on a comedy is greater than a drama.

I think, in comedy, timing is everything. You and I could tell the same joke, but if one of our timing is off, it won't be as funny. You've gotta know when to deliver your punch-lines.

There aren't many laughs in that and I remember doing a look and everybody laughed and I just thought, wow, that's incredible how you can do that. So I did another look and they laughed again and then I remember thinking, hold on, this isn't right for this piece, you've got to stop it.

I've always been a big fan of comedy and sketch comedy, and I like to laugh, but you can't just be funny. You do have to work at it, and you have to try to know what your role is and when you can insert humor, or when it's best not to.

I like to think of myself as the middleman between Fred Allen and Henny Youngman.

Stand-up is a real art form in itself and one that I really think to be good at you have to devote your entire life to. It's the really, really good ones that end up getting to do the things that I like to do: movies, TV shows, and stuff like that. It's a really hard gig and it just never called to me.

I don't think I've ever died on stage. I've had jokes that died on stage. I've told a joke and absolutely nothing. They didn't know it was the end of the joke.

Drama is this incredibly vulnerable thing, but with comedy, you have to have a sense of rhythm and be very sensitive to the pace of things.

I think stand-up comedy is this - it's this kind of indulgence and narcissism.