Martin Lawrence Quotes

Kind of the exhausting thing about doing pure comedy, or something that's broader, is you're kind of a slave to the laugh. If it's not funny, then there's not much point in doing it. The kind of ueber-objective is to make people laugh. You always have to have that in the back of your mind, 'Eh, I've got to figure out a way to make this funny.'

If you work at comedy too laboriously, you can kill what's funny in the joke.

With comedians, you have that understanding that we're trying to get laughs.

I became a specialist at comedic one-liners.

That's what I hate about a lot of comedies, when you're hitting a line or making it funny.

Especially with a comedy, you've got the clear cut goal of trying to make a scene funny. It's not like drama where you're trying to achieve some kind of emotion or trying to further the story along. You're trying to figure out what's the funniest way to do something.

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

The role of a comedian is to make the audience laugh, at a minimum of once every fifteen seconds.

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

Some people learn comedy, and some people just are comedy.

I love physical comedy. I love Oscar Wilde, I love Shakespeare comedies, I love improv.

Comedy is just to me, maybe it's a natural knack, if I can see where the joke is in the writing and I can see where the setup is and I can tell this is the way to make it.

Plus, I love comic writing. Nothing satisfies me more than finding a funny way to phrase something.

In real life, comedians aren't funny.

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

Comedy is so hard to do, so it was very cool to do dead pan humor.

I think so. I can't think of anything that requires more finesse than comedy, both from a verbal and visual point of view.

When I'm playing comedy, I never do 'jokes.' Sometimes I'll deliver a line in a way I think is more likely to get a laugh, but all the best comedy is played straight. What's funny is the way it hits the world around it or the way it hits the other characters.

With comedy, you have no place to go but more comedy, so you're never off the hook.

The funnier the material, the funnier I could make it.

The joke or the pratfall is easy for me to do.

Comedy is surprise. Comedy is not something that you can, necessarily, do twice.

At the end of the day I'm writing comedy. If you get too realistic as a comedy writer with your disasters, it stops being funny.

The nature of comedy is 'just do it.' But I think what's interesting about it is this joke has been around and why. And it's just saying what's wrong and how wrong can you be if you say it.

The comedian just wants to get a laugh.