Jenji Kohan Quotes

Creating a wonderful drama is an art form, while comedy is just entertainment.

I've always said people say on a dramatic show, 'I was crying. It was so emotional when he went and grabbed that little girl from a burning building and handed her over to her mother.' In comedy, the best thing you can say is, 'I think it's funny.'

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.

Laughter is the representative of Tragedy, when Tragedy is away.

But our comedies never endured long without a tragedy.

I love drama - I would say more than I even love comedy - but I like in One Mississippi that I can go from a very moving moment to a Willy Wonka tube up my ass. I like the silliness as much as I like drama.

People think drama drives story, but I think the comedy is really the heart and soul.

I think that you can make a drama and have it be intensely funny, and vice versa.

I'm trying to make sure that there's comedy as well as sadness. It makes the sadness more memorable.

Comedy will always be central to what I do, it's just an instinct for me, but I am a writer and always have been.

I always found that drama, really good drama, has a lot of comedy in it.

So far, at least, I haven't found a way to tell my kind of stories without making them both sad and funny.

I get giddy with the idea of stringing words together that make people laugh.

I had a strong vision for 'The Best Man Holiday,' so I was able to translate that to the actors and ultimately to the screen. Things can't get too heavy or too outrageously funny; it has to strike a balance. Tone is everything. If you've set the right tone, you can get away with a lot of stuff. You can get away with making people cry.

I think that there's a fine line between comedy and drama.

A good comedy's very hard to make, so good comic writing I really enjoy.

You can channel a lot within a comic framework, and I think 'The Guard' had a lot going on outside of the comedy, which is satisfying.

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

You cannot have the drama without comedy.

I think a lot of my songs are very silly and very stupid, written to entertain people, but in the end, I always come to that last line, and I feel that I have to wrap this up with a bit of dignity and a little tear in the eye; otherwise, the joke would be on the characters in the song.

I love down-and-dirty and grit. But I do think that my favorite dramas are ones that are dark comedies because I think that the only way the audience and the actor can really go as dark and deep as you may want to go is if there's some levity added to it.

It's a different world: when I'm writing 'Toast,' I've got one foot in 1974 and one foot in the modern day, because the modern day is nowhere near as funny or interesting.

Why should I waste my good time making a straight dramatic film? The people who can't make you laugh can do that.

I'm inspired by making people laugh at subjects that should make them cry.