Steven Wright Quotes

I do love jokes.

I think in my case, I had no choice but to have a good sense of humor. I grew up with my dad, Danny Thomas, and George Burns and Bob Hope and Milton Berle and Sid Caesar and all those guys were at our house all the time and telling jokes and making each other laugh.

We don't apologize for a joke. We are comics. We are here to make you laugh. If you don't get it, then don't watch us.

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.

I use mother-in-law jokes, kid jokes, tax jokes - anything that works.

Comedy makes you humble. Because there are so many opportunities to miss, and strike out.

Personally I don't spend much time thinking about being funny. For me it's always been just a way to get by, a way to be likable yet to remain removed. When I speak up, it's not because I have any particular answers; rather, I have a desire to puncture the pretentiousness of those who seem so certain they do.

That's what my books are, now that I'm a grownup - mosaics of jokes.

Knowing comedy is knowing human nature.

Part of what I do comes from the fact that I don't know any jokes to tell. And when I do they're really flat and don't work.

The funniest thing about comedy is that you never know why people laugh. I know what makes them laugh but trying to get your hands on the why of it is like trying to pick an eel out of a tub of water.

I still think that, hopefully, you're not ahead of the jokes, and I think that has value. There is a punchline and it's pointed - and, again, whether you think it's funny or not, that's subjective.

You can't just explain a joke. Either it isn't funny, or the person just totally missed the punchline.

A lot of comedies are based on the reaction shot. You have one person doing something stupid and one person is generally the straight man, and the laughs generally come on the reaction of the straight man to the funny thing the other person has done.

To be a comedian, you gotta jokesmith, there's no way around it.

My whole life, I've been telling jokes.

Stand up is really fun because if I think of a joke or a funny idea, then I can just go and tell some people and if they laugh, they laugh right away.

I tell the most horrible jokes.

I like comedy as a group sport.

Comedy is probably a lot harder for me. Maybe it's because I've been doing drama for so long or maybe it's because... you don't want to search for a laugh; you can't try to be funny, you just have to naturally be funny or be in a situation that's funny.

The test of a real comedian is whether you laugh at him before he opens his mouth.

I've never really told jokes. I'm not good at it.

I'm not an artist. I tell inappropriate stories and jokes and I try to make people laugh.

I used to do a lot of comedy. I don't know what happened. I think it's my face.

I don't think comedy will ever die.