Mike Nichols Quotes

In comedy, something may be more absurd, but you have to believe just as much as you do when you're doing drama.

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

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.

Like I said, all comedy is based on exaggeration, big or small, whatever you can get away with.

Comedy is surprises, so if you're intending to make somebody laugh and they don't laugh, that's funny.

Comedy is drama. I think that if your characters are feeling something that is very real, then they have to respond in a way that feels real to them, and some situations, the only response you could possibly have is to respond in a way that's so extreme that people are going to laugh.

I know the new comedy god is surrealism, but it doesn't touch my heart.

The energy in a comedy is very serious. Somebody said comedy is a tragedy plus time. When you have a tragedy, for example, like this, like, 'We're going to die,' and you have time, like, five hours to die, it becomes a comedy.

Incongruity, they say, is one of the main ingredients of humor. Maybe it's because everybody can feel superior to me. I honestly don't know.

I like all kinds of comedy. I like comedy that doesn't talk about real beliefs or serious thoughts, but then I also like the stuff that does. I think it just depends. It's a completely personal choice.

Humor is something that thrives between man's aspirations and his limitations. There is more logic in humor than in anything else. Because, you see, humor is truth.

Comedy is so subjective, you know what I mean? To sit there and technically pick it apart is so stupid.

I mean comedy is something that's very personal and people have strong opinions about.

People don't get my sense of humour.

It's funny because it's funny.

What I like about the jokes, to me it's a lot of logic, no matter how crazy they are. It has to make absolute sense, or it won't be funny.

There's some sort of unspoken license... when outlandish things come out of an inanimate object, somehow it equals humor.

Comedy is subjective, and any joke can be funny.

I don't find that I subscribe or believe in many rules about what comedy is and what makes it funny.

Woody Allen's 'The Complete Prose' - It's just the best selection of comic writing by one author. You know it's good comedy when you get quite demoralised about yourself.

Playing on stereotypes was meant to be humorous. If it doesn't tickle you in certain spots, it's not going to be funny. Falling down the stairs is a seriously dangerous thing, but watching it is HILARIOUS!

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.

We tend to associate humor with lightheartedness, but really, it's a rhetorical mode than can be applied to any subject. It was through researching Chechnya that I came to understand this.

I like both slapstick and contradiction. Like philosophers.

Humor is the contemplation of the finite from the point of view of the infinite.