Jim Rash Quotes

I'm not really good at character or plot development. I'm just interested in big comedic moments.

Because I was a television writer for many years, I write very conversationally. I put things straight, and with a lot of humor.

With sitcom writing, you're trying to write stories.

For me, playwriting is and has always been like making a chair. Your concerns are balance, form, timing, lights, space, music. If you don't have these essentials, you might as well be writing a theoretical essay, not a play.

I do think comedy needs to be a living thing, but I think without a great script and fully realized characters, you cannot keep it living. Otherwise, it just becomes long and rambling, indulgent. So I think you need both, frankly.

I think sketch writing is a good spot for everyone to start because it requires you to develop characters, have a beginning, middle and end and have a bunch of jokes in a short amount of time.

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

I try to give all my characters a sense of humor, so I guess I feel like I have done comedy, but maybe I'm better known for drama.

Most people are used to the T.V. comedy method of one joke every 18 seconds. And that's why it's not funny... There's no time for anything to develop.

If you're making comedies, they have to have a fun and a rhythm to them.

Cameron Crowe can write dialogue and shoot it with warmth and humor like nobody else.

If you do weave one-liners into a story, you have to have an overall story as well, otherwise it doesn't really count as narrative.

You can trust a Neil Simon script. Every dot. Every dash; that pause means something. He takes all the jokes out, practically.

I think, with certain characters, you have to listen. Sometimes, listening can be funnier: the thing you don't say is the one-liner. That's the ying to the yang.

Part of my writing style can be attributed to my mother's impatience with comedy, because whenever I told her a story she would say, 'Yeah, yeah, just tell me: is it good for you or bad for you?' Consequently, I think, I was always afraid to indulge in the time that you need to tell a joke, very nervous about anything that constituted an Act II.

What I love about sketch is that the writing of it is idea-based. It's not story-based. It's like, 'This is a behavior, and we're going to write, in a small sample, the funniest way to heighten this behavior.' Sitcoms or movies are about story.

Amy Sherman-Palladino is very funny. She's got just natural timing and comedic instinct. And she writes in a comedic rhythm.

If I had to write long-form stuff with descriptions of rooms, it would be so boring for me. I like writing dialogue and jokes and situational stuff.

Tweeting is a great way to practice writing jokes, but there is so much more to comedy writing than just jokes. Jokes are a necessity, but you also have to learn how to write characters, to break a story, to keep coherence between episodes. I've learned more by being a TV writer than I ever could've on my own.

A lot of the time, a comedy script is just dialogue, and that's the main thing you have to worry about.

Sitcom writing is difficult because it's not just about writing jokes - there's a very fine balance between characters, plot, and comedy, that if you get one thing wrong, the whole castle comes falling down.

The hardest thing to write is sitcom.

At first I had no skills in writing comedy. I didn't know what a joke was, but, as someone once told me, your emotions follow your intent. If you create the intention of starting a comedy act, slowly your mind starts adjusting and you arrive at a new emotional state.

In British sitcoms, you can get five minutes of nothing before the story starts.

I always pushed back on doing long-form. I imagined SpongeBob as being simple, and I wanted to concentrate on character humor.