Bill Cosby Quotes

The ability to be funny is pretty widespread in the population.

I think I'm the funniest guy in a room full of unfunny people. Unfortunately, my career is increasingly leading me into rooms where everybody is funny. I'm the least funny person in a room full of funny people.

Well, anybody can be a straight man if he hears well. You just have to wait for laughs. A straight man just repeats the questions and the comedian gets the laughs and you just wait for them and don't let them die completely at the tail end of the laugh.

I like things that are funny - in everyday conversation, in incidents that you see, in watching TV or watching film. Comedy has always had an impact on my life.

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 think I'm a natural appreciator of comedy. I was definitely not the girl in junior high that all the guys wanted to date. They wanted to date my friends - which was great, because I had to be funny.

I try not to see new comics - their acts or their films. Part of that is professional. I don't want to be influenced. But another part is fear and jealousy. I'm afraid to see how good they might be. I don't like that emotion, but it's part of me.

I've been blessed to have done different roles, but I don't think people see me as funny.

I think most of the actors that I know that I think are good are kind of funny people. There's just something about being alive to the truth of a moment that makes a good joke that also makes a good actor.

Comedy is actually very hard. It's hard to choose those moments and know when you can really push it, and know when you should be bringing it back and making it more subtle, and knowing as time goes on, as you do take after take and the crowd around you stops laughing. Whenever you do comedy, you realize you're up against - you're performing next to people who you would think are so unbelievably good at it, that that's a bit of a pressure. But at the same time, it's just fun. It's fun to be able to let out that side of you.

Most of what's tricky about comedy is the perception of it and the audience's expectation.

That's a lovely experience when you make an audience laugh. Then the nerves go away for a bit. And sometimes you do things then that you've never done before that are really funny.

There are few lonelier sights than a good comedian being funny in a movie that doesn't know what funny is.

I think it's that much harder to make a good comedy than it is straight and apparently serious.

When you people have a set up joke and the joke is set up straight and the words are just well written, I always say "C'mon, humans don't speak that way."

I don't think comedy is something you learn. I think it's something that's either there or it's not. When I read a script, I have to see the funny, and if I can see it's funny, it helps me to be able to transmit that.

We actually talked about Adam Sandler during the creation of 'Trolls,' because he does know how to time jokes.

I don't feel any pressure to be funny at all. I'm funny because I want to be funny. I could sit here and be serious for an hour and you would go away and make me much funnier than I am.

I think I'm the funniest guy in a room full of unfunny people.

Sometimes you're not getting the laughs you want or at the place you want but that doesn't mean it's not funny. It means you haven't explored it enough.

Timing is the essence of life, and definitely of comedy.

There is no Algorithm for Humor

You can't have a laugh track that sort of tells the audience when to laugh and, you know, it's difficult to find those moments.

Not a time with him passed that I didn't say, "You should've been a comedian." [Vincent Price] was hilarious. He was just such a quick, funny wit. I don't think most people would think that about him, and it was really surprising to me. But man, the guy had a brilliant wit.

Just because you're a belter doesn't make you funny; it just means that's how your pipes are set up.