David Thewlis Quotes

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 guess I don't have much interest in writing straight drama. So whatever subject matter I choose will ultimately be dealt with in a comic way.

A lot of French comedy is satire.

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

No subject is unsuitable for comedy.

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

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.

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

Comedy, at least the way I write comedy, is just drama with jokes.

We have never been strictly political, only strictly funny.

In the end, everything is a gag.

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

Humor is merely tragedy standing on its head with its pants torn.

I adore jokes. They're a theatrical contrivance, but the irony of all fiction is that you approach reality by avoiding it a bit; you spoof it a bit.

I see the absurdity in things, and I think it's my job to point it out.

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

If written with enough care and thoughtfulness, a joke can make you laugh at a belief you hold dear.

And I think comedy obviously a great way to get a message out because you know the reason why things are funny is because they're true.

Comedy can be very deep sometimes.

Sometimes, I use humor because I believe in revealing truth in a way that other forms cannot.

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

Taking the humour out of Dickens, it's not Dickens any more.

Comedies always need to be provocative and catch your attention in a way that dramas don't have to.

Comedy is created when someone is trying very earnestly to do what he feels is the right thing to do at that moment.

Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals.