Bo Burnham Quotes

Reading Alan Zweibel makes me laugh out loud. And yet it is not a particularly funny name.

The most important thing in comedy - apart from empathy, which I think is important even if disguised - is surprise. I like surprising people with the fact that something's even a joke at all.

I don't think there's a punch-line scheduled, is there?

I'm inspired by making people laugh at subjects that should make them cry.

I guess I prefer the laughs. I couldn't do a whole set of just shocks, but I like throwing a fastball inside every now and then to keep people on their toes.

I'm actually way more funny now, because I'm hungry... If comedy comes from pain, I should be funnier now than I ever was.

I love to make people laugh, and do things that are surprising and different.

A poet or a comedian can say what's on the mind of people. They should be funny. They should make you laugh. It may be so truthful that it hurts, but it makes you laugh.

When you need a good laugh, do you reach for a book? I don't. I expect books to move me deeply and submerge me in another reality. So when a novel makes me roar with laughter, it's always a delightful surprise.

For me, if you distill comedy down, it is surprise and the unexpected. That has to be it on its most base level, in any form.

The secret to humor is surprise.

What's great about comedy, obviously, is that you set up a situation that people assume one thing and then you break the assumption. That's basically the backbone to comedy. You set up a situation, let people make an assumption, and then you break the assumption.

People don't expect me to be as funny as I am.

Humor has to surprise us; otherwise, it isn't funny. It's a death knell for a writer to be labeled a humorist because then it's not a surprise anymore.

People always ask me, 'Were you funny as a child?' Well, no, I was an accountant.

You can analyse a joke and say it's funny because this guy thought this was going to happen, and that happened, and it's surprising. But not all surprising things are funny.

Comedy is surprise. Comedy is not something that you can, necessarily, do twice.

I think it's always funny when somebody thinks you're going to do something super sexy and then you don't.

This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.

Fear is what makes comedy funny.

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

Comedy's the ultimate pill that helps the really hard truths and hard facts go down, right?

I've always felt that there's a lot of similarity between doing a comedy and doing a scary movie because jokes and scares are all about timing. If you give the punch line too early or too late, the joke falls flat. And it's the same with a scare.

I’m a ridiculous person. If you take anything any comedian says seriously, then you’re stupid.

I'm a sarcastic person. I learn through humor.