Ben Dolnick Quotes

The book says, 'Vanity Fair - a story without a hero.' Becky is effectively the protagonist, the hero we follow. But she is flawed. Becky is a subject of her own time.

I wouldn't overall say that "The Diagnosis" is a funny book. I would say that it has comic moments. It's a modern tragedy.

There's comedy even in tragedy. There's comedy in life. And in 'Castle', we go for that comedy.

I remain a fan of my friend Bret Easton Ellis's 'American Psycho.' I think as a book about New York in the '80s it was pretty excellent.

I'd have to say that my favorite kind of film is serious comedy. Comedy with serious underpinning. 'Little Miss Sunshine' is like that. That's my fave genre, if I had to pick one.

I think comedy is drama, often. It's hard to have comedy over a period of time - commercials are one thing, but over a period of time - comedy and tragedy go hand in hand.

'Pastoralia' by George Saunders. Possibly my favorite book. It's one of the weirdest books I've ever read. If Monty Python and Thomas Pynchon had a love child, and it was raised by Frank Zappa on a weird commune, that would be this book.

I read The Old Curiosity Shop before I began Blackwood Farm. I was amazed at the utter madness in that book.

Less Than Zero and American Psycho were both really different, so I was just like, Okay, he's just really doesn't have anything pleasant to say, you know? But I get it. I get at least why it's difficult and what he's really doing.

But if you read Jane Austen, you know that she had a wicked sense of humor. Not only was she funny, but her early writing was very dark and had a gothic tone to it.

Flannery O'Connor's brief life and slim output were nonetheless marked by piercing powers of observation.

When I was a playwright earlier in my career - my senior project in high school was my first produced play - I used to put on the title page: 'A tragedy with laughs.'

There's obviously a lot of tragedy in comedy; I really enjoy the paradox of what a really good comedy is.

My style of comedy is very real and bittersweet, and sort of always on the verge of kind of being tragic.

I think that Ionesco's greatest weapon is that he's able to make us laugh at the darkest corners of our souls.

The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind.

Any film which views the darker side of life, which is death with a sense of humor, is very much to my taste.

Duncan Sheik and I are trucking along on 'American Psycho,' which is sort of the anti-Superman, you know? But it's a lot of fun, too, in a much, much darker way, obviously.

I think one of my very favorite films of all time was with Peter Sellers when he played Chauncey, the gardener. Being There.

'Catch-22''s admirers cross boundaries - ideological, generational, geographical.

Tragedy without comedy is melodrama, and comedy without a higher purpose is vacant.

I've always been interested in the antihero myself.

I think 'Paper Moon' is a comedy-drama. 'What's Up, Doc?' was the most severe comedy, but my favorite film of my own is 'They All Laughed,' which is a kind of bittersweet comedy.

I think of everything as comedy, but I don't think of it in terms of sitcom comedy, I think of it in terms of Chekhov comedy. Chekhov called his plays comedies. There's always a mixture of a laugh with sadness. So the plie to the laugh is sadness.

I've always been attracted to more intense and darker roles, but I think there is complexity and darkness in comedies as well.