Nicole Byer Quotes

Very few people took sordid things and made comedies out of them.

Only in America could you get away with the kind of comedy I did.

For me, comedy was deftly terrifying.

I feel like my comedy voice is to take the news and everything that's happening and put a funny spin on it or to pick out the things I find funny about it.

I'm a very observational type of comedian that points out everyday absurdities.

Satire and comedy are really the only film mediums where you can get into ideas and have people leave the theater without being moralized.

I tend to find comedy in dark places. I also tend to find comedy in taking on the status quo - which has always been something I find important.

I think you can tell the human condition better through comedy.

Comedically, unpleasantness is great fun.

I'm not the voice of reason; I'm more the guy using these offensive topics as fodder to raise tension in a joke.

We're comic. We're all comics. We live in a comic time. And the worse it gets the more comic we are.

Being a comedy writer gives you permission to be an outsider and poke fun at what people think about other people.

At the risk of appearing disingenuous, I don't really think of myself as 'writing humor.' I'm simply reporting on the world I observe, which is frequently hilarious.

In a way, a lot of my humor comes from presenting things that are dramatic or shocking and then people not having socially appropriate responses, having people denying the drama by failing to react to it, and that's a really classic form of humor.

But in terms of satire and comedy, our biggest and earliest influence was Mad magazine.

I think at its best the American sense of humor is the same as the British sense of humor at its best, which is to be wry and ironic and self deprecating.

I think comedy is the perfect vehicle for that which is slightly beyond life.

I love the satire and skewering of comedy writing.

It is difficult not to write satire.

It just happened that the public happened to, uh, appreciate the satirical quality of these crazy things.

When Kubrick decided to go the black comedy route with his movie, he thought of me to give it that flavor.

Comedy is a way to make sense of chaos. It's a way of dealing with things that are overwhelming, that threaten you; it's a way to survive and get closer to the truth.

It seems like there's a lot of people who just do not understand satire. They think it's weird. There's people who just don't understand you portray something or just explore a character, it means you're condoning it, saying this is the way to live.

What makes me laugh is, of course, the absurd, the horror - anything that upsets me.

The trouble with most comedians who try to do satire is that they are essentially brash, noisy and indelicate people who have to use a sledge hammer to smash a butterfly.