Stephen Hillenburg Quotes

I think one of the funniest things about '30 Rock' is that Liz Lemon is sort of like Buster Keaton - she's always the fool, the joke is always on her.

I like a person who knows how to say something dark at a very dark moment. The darker the moment and the darker the comic, the better. Something that is so wrong on all levels.

There's obviously a lot of tragedy in comedy; I really enjoy the paradox of what a really good comedy is.

A farce, or slapstick humor, does well universally.

If you stretch tragedy, it will always become comedy.

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.

Comedy is tragedy revisited.

I naturally think in terms of comedy whenever I see anything because tragedy is so close to comedy, so I like to add the tragedy to the comedy or a little bit of comedy to the tragedy in order to make them both feel more real to me.

Comedies always need to be provocative and catch your attention in a way that dramas don't have to.

God writes a lot of comedy... the trouble is, he's stuck with so many bad actors who don't know how to play funny.

You can laugh at somebody because they are innocent, and because they are naive or they are about to walk into a wall, but if somebody's giving you stuff, if somebody's talking, giving you their take on things, what makes you laugh, generally speaking, is going to be somebody who is telling it in an angry way.

I've always loved pure, silly slapstick comedy. It always makes me laugh.

I think that a big part of comedy is being made fun of, and it is looking silly or looking stupid.

I don't really find things funny unless they're deeply tragic at the same time. I think if you're funny just for the sake of being funny, it's just frivolous nonsense. To me, all the best comic plays have been written about really serious and rather bleak things.

There's comedy even in tragedy. There's comedy in life. And in 'Castle', we go for that comedy.

It's great extremes which leads to great drama and great comedy.

Many of my poems try to use a comic element to reach a place that isn't comic at all. The comic element works as a surprise. It is unexpected and energizing.

When you take a character seriously, there's more room for comedy because you're not aware of how absurd you are.

If you play comedic scenes like they're really serious, then it's so much more funny than if you're going for a laugh.

Humor is very interesting to me. My films are not comedies, but there's comedy in them from time to time, absurdities, just like in real life.

I've always enjoyed watching characters that aren't aware that they're doing anything funny. And I think that inherently makes them funnier.

The Canteen Boy, the reason you feel bad for him and you can laugh is because he, and I guess a lot of my characters, they don't notice they're getting made fun of. So they'll say something back that's not that great a quip, but in their mind they won the argument.

Comedy arises out of necessity, because some things are so dark that you have to laugh about it.

When you get down to it, at it's root, Comedy is truth, absurdity, and pain. One of my little mottos is: 'Do you remember the Peanuts cartoon where Charlie Brown kicked the football and kissed the Little Red Haired Girl? Neither do I.'

I quite like dark humor.