John Waters Quotes

Like I said, a sketch is one joke. They shouldn't really be more than a minute, two minutes. There are some shows where the sketch goes on for five minutes. It's like, "I get it! I'm already bored. I did like the joke, but I don't anymore, because you went on too long."

You can't make people laugh for more than half an hour and be consistent.

My stand-up is quite good now, people say. It's just like a big conversation each time. Every gig is a rehearsal.

The important thing, once you get 'em laughing, is to keep 'em laughing until you're through. With a 90-minute feature, you've got to stop the laughter and then pick it up again, which is tough.

You can't instruct an audience to laugh, but what you can do is read well and understand the spirit and subtleties, if there are any, in the dialogue.

Acting is all about timing. I mean, who has better timing than the MCs?

We don't have a laugh track, which helped Seinfeld a lot, and did kind of tell people when to laugh. It just made it a lot easier. Our show doesn't have that, so it's hard for Middle America to catch on.

Humor writing requires a rhythm and timing, as well as some kind of connection to the reader, and I think that's how I tap into it.

The jokes are great but what really matters for a comedian is his performance, his whole attitude, and the laughs that he gets between the jokes rather than on top of the jokes.

Only one in four jokes ever works, and I still can't predict what people will laugh at.

It's a really nice way to cut your teeth, doing live shows. It's like going to the gym because you do have to think fast. You are constantly under the threat of people not laughing. Instead of getting hit, people could just not laugh, so you really are trying to mine quickly for the funniest thing you could say in that moment.

You can teach somebody how to be a brain surgeon, but you cannot teach them how to walk on a stage and make people laugh.

Humor has the tendency to be funny once. If I tell you a joke, we're going to have a big laugh. But the second time I tell the joke, it's going to be a bit strange, and the third time you're going to ask if there's something wrong with me. So I am very cautious with jokes, but there is a lightness in my work.

The great thing about writing jokes for President Obama is that he is not afraid to tell jokes that are actually funny - and not just funny for a politician.

I know what I want to talk about, but I don't really know what's funny about a joke until I perform it in front of an audience.

It's one thing to be funny in a tweet. It is another to be funny for an hour.

I'm pretty good at getting over people throwing stuff at me. If you've been doing stand up long enough you know how to swing back and get the laughs.

You have more of a responsibility to make the audience laugh. In comedy, we do have to say, "All right, it's been two minutes in the film. We need another laugh here." With drama, there's no pressure in that regard. It's a different kind of pressure, but it's not like we need to make someone laugh.

Anybody can go onstage and be dirty. You have to be funny, that's the key. You can say anything as long as it's funny. You can't take it too seriously up there. And people coming to see you can't take it too seriously.

I love those people who do story-telling and who ramble on, but I don't do that, I tell jokes - the sort of jokes that anyone really could tell in the pub.

I wanted to take the audience on a journey where that transition was funny and awkward. It's the same cynicism that [Strange] has.

As a live stand-up comedy performer, I have the benefit of choosing real entrance music.

There's obviously some appeal in scenes for me - there's something I respond to. I keep doing those films where I put myself out there like that. I guess I look for those kinds of moments and I pride myself on being an actor who will do just about anything for a laugh - so long as it's within context of the scene in the movie and it's not gratuitous. I have to feel it'll make people laugh.

As far as just my stand-up is concerned, I don't care about changing anyone's mind. I'm not making an argument. I'm a guy doing comedy.

I think comedy is difficult, and I'm amazed so many people want to do it. I'll be buying jeans and somebody will say, "I'm a comedian" - the guy selling you the jeans. The desire to be a comedian is weird. I found it weird myself to want to be one; I was a schoolboy when I wanted to be one but I didn't know how to do it. That was 50 years ago, so times have changed greatly. There seems to be a long line of people desperate to do it and most of them are quite good.