Mitch Hedberg Quotes

The whole point of real comedy is that you can say something that is true, and by being funny, you can make it tolerable for people, and hopefully they'll laugh at you, too.

The funniest line in English is 'Get it?' When you say that, everyone chortles.

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

The pun exists in a social and political void, caring nothing for the issues of its day, content merely to display itself in its small cleverness.

My sense of humor is a turkey, and I pull it out of the oven and baste it in reality.

Comedy isn't just timing; it's about rooting out the funny in the real. You just bend reality to the left a little.

The whole point of comedy, what's fun, is taking the stupid thought I had and working it into something that makes a bunch of people laugh.

Rob and I both have this strange sense of comedy which always involves us being the butt of our own jokes.

I said to the waitress, "There's a fly swimming in my soup." She said: "You've got too much soup - he should only be able to paddle."

With comedians, you have that understanding that we're trying to get laughs.

It is quite possible for the vulgar to be funny, but to succeed, it must rise to a certain genius.

A lot of comedies are based on the reaction shot. You have one person doing something stupid and one person is generally the straight man, and the laughs generally come on the reaction of the straight man to the funny thing the other person has done.

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.

I've always thought something that makes you laugh, it makes you laugh because there's a little bit of truth to it.

There is certainly a higher percentage of wit in British comedy than in American comedy. What always tickles me is the way in which people try to use their intellect to get themselves out of tricky situations but never quite manage to do so - much to their enormous embarrassment.

Comedians, we're just people who whine. But we happen to be funny when we whine. Like, if Jerry Seinfeld wasn't funny, you'd want to punch him in the face; he'd just seem like a whiner to you. But the fact is that he's funny.

I have a memory like an elephant. I remember every elephant I've ever met.

Puns are a form of humor with words.

My best jokes are so cheap. All I do is say things sarcastically.

Silences are the most underrated part of comedy.

I'm not a great joke writer, which is odd for a comic to say, but I'm not.

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.

You shouldn't get too close to the truth, because then maybe you stop being funny.

The secret to humor is surprise.

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.