Christoph Waltz Quotes

Comedy is inherently subversive because it turns the normal reality on its head. The art form is all about these questions and contradictions. In comedy, we're dealing with language that we all understand, but words can have a dozen other things around them that alter or affect meaning.

It's great that I get accused of not being politically correct. People need to take themselves less seriously. This world is so screwed up as it is, we've all got to relax a bit more.

I like the idea of being caught between things, always being a bit of an outsider, having an outside eye on things - almost like a Shakespearean fool.

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 world today doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?

The definition of comedy is 'unsafe space' - you can't control what people laugh at.

I think there's something funny about people who laugh in the face of convention or surprise us morally.

I always said that in a country where a legislature, its sessions limited by statute, could alter reality by turning back the clock (I actually saw this done, once, with a long pole pushing on the hour hand), any travesty was possible. I see nothing lately to prove me wrong.

The humorist has a good eye for the humbug; he does not always recognize the saint.

Nothing is taboo if you have an angle on it. That said, critiquing women's human shells isn't my thang. Though there's probably something funny or interesting to be said about those who do it, and what that comes from.

There is no such thing as an appropriate joke. That's why it's a joke.

[Comedy] is an escape from illusions. The audience is...thinking, 'This bullshit we see and hear all day makes no sense.'

I think comedy's often the little and the large, isn't it?

Comedy speaks for civilization; farce bears an ill-concealed, sometimes unconcealed animus against civilization. Often against civility too.

It's almost as if we're put here on earth to show how silly they aren't.

When you're born in this world you're given a ticket to the Freak Show. And when you're born in America, you're given a front row seat. And some of us get to sit there with notebooks.

The people who fear humor - and they are many - are suspicious of its power to present things in unexpected lights, to question received opinions and to suggest unforeseen possibilities.

I am sure the man who powders most, perfumes most, embroiders most, and talks most nonsense, is most admired. Though to be candid, there are some who have too much good sense to esteem such monkey-like animals as these, in whose formation, as the saying is, the tailors and barbers go halves with God Almighty.

I think comedy is an angry art form; it's an outsider art form.

Y'see, when you start to lick a national problem you have to go after the fundamentables. You want to cut down air pollution? Cut down the original source... Breathin!

As much as "The Lobster" feels like a world we recognize but not the world we live in, it's all drawn in an allegorical way from all the systems that exist.

The things of this world reveal their essential absurdity when they are put in the Venetian context. In the unreal realm of the canals, as in a Swiftian Lilliput, the real world, with its contrivances, appears as a vast folly.

It's getting funnier because everybody's categories are disintegrating, and the cult of political correctness dictates that we never point out that other people don't make sense.

I've always found relationships, men and women, the fact that they are so radically different, and it manifests itself in so many different ways, and yet somehow we still try to live together and be friends. I find that endlessly valuable as a source of material for humor. Generally dogs are always funny in my opinion. And the federal government - just a relentlessly productive source of humor.

Irony - The modern mode: either the devil’s mark or the snorkel of sanity.