Chris Rock Quotes

Using humor as a wedge into different kinds of stories is my go-to. I think anything I do would have some sort of streak of humor in it.

I never write jokes, I just try to make myself laugh.

We just make stuff that we think is funny and fun, and I think that's the most you can do. I think if you're chasing virality, it just feels desperate.

You don't have to underestimate your audience anymore. They'd actually like to laugh a little bit. So, the character came to me and once it's got its grips in you, there's nowhere to go.

You've got to concentrate on the business of entertaining and writing songs. Always think different from the next person. Don't ever do a song as you heard somebody else do it.

Write what makes you laugh not what you think will make someone else laugh.

We started gearing our content more to what makes us laugh and stories we wanted to tell, and we had to decide, early on, to not be precious about it.

I really loved what I was doing being creative and being funny as a stand-up comedian.

Novelists want to be published and need a publisher to decide to print 20,000 copies. So you need to entertain on some level. I want to reach out and connect.

The business of entertainment is business first. I do a comic strip; the job, the business, is to be funny. If I’m not funny, the politics don’t matter, because no one will read it.

There's no idea or concept in comedy you could do that hasn't been attacked from some angle. But if you start leaving punchlines out so you'll look cool, I don't get that. But I don't watch standup anyway, so I don't know what they're doing.

'Playing House' works because we're being supremely honest to what we think is funny and not what we think other people think is funny.

When I started stand-up, the people I admired most were the people who were the most themselves onstage.

Be it films or shows or plays, it's the content that matters the most.

I don't approach my movies with a target audience in mind. I try to make something that's true to the subject matter as much as possible, while still being entertaining and fun.

When I listen to a basic thought, I try to visualise the cinema in it. Sometimes it is dark, sometimes boyish, sometimes amateurish. It is a trial and error method. But the bottom line is that I want to entertain the audience.

I don't have any writers. I never get a laugh with somebody else's jokes. I can't do it justice.

When doing comedy, I do what makes me laugh. The first person I learned from said I should talk about things I am passionate about - that I love or hate - because the audience likes to see passion. The stuff I rant and rave about stems from a place that really pisses me off.

Lena Dunham or Miranda July, those people are sort of thinking about their work in a slightly different way than I do, where their whole body is a seed of what they're creating. I can't imagine watching Miranda's movies with anybody else playing her role, she's so integral. But for me, it feels more like every story is really individual. If I thought of something else, or thought it should be my body representing it, I'd fold my body into it. But most of the time I'm writing to get something out of my body.

Don't write about what you know - write about what you're interested in. Don't write about yourself - you aren't as interesting as you think.

I don't really think about film or television or going directly to the internet. I just think about doing something that people are going to get excited about.

I think references, where they fit organically, are great. It's great to do a show that's real and relatable, and so much of what is real, is using real things and instances that are specific. Specificity is the best tool you can have, as a writer.

Whenever you think you're writing what other people want to hear from you, and that it'll be commercial, you're doomed to disaster. Writing has to be as truthful and specific as we can make it. The minute we think that we're reaching more people and pleasing them, we get general. And audiences sense that and turn away, shun us.

I enjoy both TV writing and novel writing, and they are very similar. The goal is to entertain and amuse the audience, and I subscribe to this P.G. Wodehouse piece of advice: "Try to give pleasure with every sentence."

When you write from your gut and let the stuff stay flawed and don't let anybody tell you to make it better, it can end up looking like nothing else.