James Thurber Quotes

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.

My gift was in comedy. I found out I could make jokes. I could tell jokes. I could write them. So over the years, that's what I've done.

It's much easier to write a solemn book than a funny book. It's harder to make people laugh than it is to make them cry. People are always on the verge of tears.

I realized that I really enjoy writing comedy, and how important comedy is when you feel like total crap.

Comedy is much harder, it's a lot more exacting. You can't just be real and you can't just use the same kind of techniques you use to fill up a regular scene.

I'm a novelist first, and I wrote a bunch of books, and everything I write, I just find people are more interesting when there's an element of humor to it.

When you have a writing partner and you're writing a comedy, your goal is to make each other laugh.

I think the hardest thing to do in the world, show-business-wise, is write comedy.

And writing comedy and it really taught me how to kind of like craft jokes, it sounds like weird but really focus on crafting jokes and trying to make the writing really sharp. At the same time I did improv comedy in college, and that helped with understanding the performance aspect of comedy, you know, because it's different when you improv something vs. when you write it and they're both kind of part of my process now.

In comedy, you have to do all of the same stuff you do in drama and then put the comedy on top of it. You, the actor, are aware of the comedy but the character is oblivious. And you have to have a sense of humor.

I have a reputation for doing superheroes, but I like all kinds of writing. In fact, hardly anybody knows this, but I've probably written as many humor stories as superhero stories.

I have a very high respect for professional comedians. What they do astonishes me. You have to be really smart and absorb everything, repackage it, bring it back to the person, and make them laugh at themselves. I can make people laugh during my talks because they didn't come to have me make them laugh. It's added value. So my job is way easier than that of a professional comic.

I feel more comfortable writing firmly comedic or slightly comedic stuff.

I think comedy is the hardest actual form of writing there is.

I love to write humor. If I could make a living doing it that is all I would write.

What it is is that comedy is underrepresented in every actor's life, because it's so bloody difficult to write. Anyone can write, and then you leave it to special effects to make it look good. But comedy, you've got to do some writing.

If you're going to have a book full of clever people and nobody ever jokes, it's just not going to ring true to the reader. That said, humor writing is the hardest kind of writing there is.

Writing is very difficult. You have 120 pages of blank paper and it's like, "Go fill that up with some funny stuff," and that's challenging.

I love to write humor. If I could make a living doing it that is all I would write. The happiest period of my life is when I was writing the sequels to "MASH". I was able to ridicule everyone.

I've been writing jokes since I'm fifteen. Not out of happiness, but to go to a different place, because reality wasn't good to me.

Judd Apatow, Conan O'Brien ... taking what you think is funny, and then adding another layer to it. That's kind of my sensibility. Those are the guys that make me laugh.

Jokes that make me laugh out loud when I write them almost always bomb. I have no idea why.

What's the trick to writing a genuinely funny comedy? The trick is therapy. Take notes.

It's quite frightening; the business of trying to be funny is very hairy. In comedy, the potential for humiliation is huge. Trying to be funny and failing is about the most embarrassing thing you can do.

I'm not a great joke writer, which is odd for a comic to say, but I'm not. So it's hard for me to come up with things, because I don't write stuff, I don't write my act down.