Rita Mae Brown Quotes

'Ugly Betty' has been the most important thing I've ever done, easily. I was able to do more with one character than I can ever imagine doing again - Hilda was hilariously funny and emotionally deep... I really got to showcase what I could do with a character.

I made the choice long ago to write about real life. And life is both serious and funny.

A good comic explores the imagination, but it's always got to have those notes of truth running through it.

I do idiosyncratic dramedies.

I think all my life's story is condensed in my face. It is neither innocent nor coy. It speaks volumes.

Every day I learn something new, and, you know, you go through life's experiences, and if you can bring every experience at some point somewhere in every drama or every story that you have to portray, you will come across an emotion or a feeling you have had some point in your life.

So often with beginning writers, the story that they want to start with is the most important story of their life - my molestation, my this, my horrible drug addiction - they want to tell that most important story, and they don't have the skills to tell it yet, so it ends up becoming a comedy. A powerful story told poorly becomes funny, it just makes people laugh behind their hands.

You feel like telling him you're not single in the way that he thinks you're single. After all, you have yourself. I think a lot of humor is about distracting yourself. Pretend you're not trying to make it funny. Because for some reason the effort to be funny smells like sulphur in our culture.

I feel like I'm getting closer and closer to myself with time, not only in terms of my career choices, but the choices I make within one role or performance. I used to compose characters that were farther from me, but I find now that I like to craft a subtle composition, a subtle change in your essence.

Comedy and drama are different sides of the same coin. And the thing about comedy and drama is about likability. It's about character first. It's about story. And for me, it's about empathy, and I think the realer someone is, the further you can go either way with them.

There’s nothing more humbling than seeing your best quotes in a list, and thinking they could have been written by a coma patient with a keyboard and spasms.

What I've always done as an entertainer is try to come up with things that people will find interesting, or compelling, or humorous.

You put funny people in funny costumes and paint them green and we could talk about anything we wanted to, because that was the only thing that fascinated Gene about this particular genre.

Well, I think that in every character there are little bits and pieces of yourself.

With a lot of comedies, the characters go on a journey, and they come back, and they're the exact same people.

My humour has always come from anger, but I have to make sure I don't just get angry and jump on a soapbox.

I don't just try to be funny.

If you try to be funny, you're not being funny.

I am a comic writer, which means I get to slay the dragons, and shoot the bull.

I get just as much of a thrill out of constructing a good sentence that gets a laugh at the end as I do from a joke.

I think writers have become hypnotised by the number of jokes on the page at the expense of character.

I want to make videos that, if I didn't know myself, I'd want to watch. As long as I'm making myself laugh, I'm usually having a good time. That's how I know I've made a video that I'm proud of: I've made myself laugh.

I see bits and pieces of me in all the characters in my films.

Sure, I am funny and have a good sense of humor. Mostly, though, I just tell the truth. The internal dialogue people have in their heads - I just write it.

The older I've gotten, the more the need to exert comedy no matter how tragic a character I may be portraying because they are essentials for presenting truth.