Jim Jefferies Quotes

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'm dirty, I'm irreverent - but I'm still a very topical comedian.

I have a rule - 'funny is funny!' When I write comedy, it's not my aim to upset people. I will be offensive, edgy and immature, but I will also be very intelligent and relevant. At my shows, there are no holy cows.

There's a fraudulent root element of comedy in that we say things night after night as though they are rolling effortlessly from the brain and off the tongue, when in fact they are crafted over weeks and months and years.

On 'The Simpsons,' I will say that we definitely like to comment on what's going on in the world, and we try to be funny. If we can figure out a way of being funny about it, then we've gone part of the way of accomplishing our task.

I kind of thought that stand-up comedy would suffer from the Internet because people seem to know more about the craft of stand-up than ever before. I thought it would seem trite. Kind of like if you know more about magicians, you wouldn't love them.

Regardless of what kind of film, the number one rule of comedy is to never take yourself too seriously and then the next rule is you can't have any self-consciousness, otherwise it kills the laugh, and that will never change.

The ability to workshop in stand-up comedy is incomparable to any art form, in my opinion.

I think it's important for comedians to do our little part. I don't do it carelessly. I do it thoughtfully. I don't try to just shock. I try to make a statement.

Kind of the exhausting thing about doing pure comedy, or something that's broader, is you're kind of a slave to the laugh. If it's not funny, then there's not much point in doing it. The kind of ueber-objective is to make people laugh. You always have to have that in the back of your mind, 'Eh, I've got to figure out a way to make this funny.'

Mixing humor and politics is something that works.

The basic function of a comic is stand-up because it's so straightforward and simple. If the audience don't laugh, you didn't do your job. I've had some audiences where I didn't care if they laughed or not because they were either too drunk or stupid.

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.

Making people laugh is magic. I feel like if you have humility, then you can do anything in comedy.

You're at the top of your game if you do comedy.

It proved to me, though, that comedy is so much harder.

The odd thing about comedy is that the more personal you are, the larger the audience.

I think, you know, a lot of the business of comedy is taking your personal experiences and making them relatable to other people.

My show in Egypt was called, 'The Show,' or, 'Al Bernameg' in Arabic. Basically, it was a political satire show. It started on Internet by three, four-minute episodes, and then it evolved into a live show in a theater, which was something that was unprecedented in the Arab world.

How precise you need to be when you're in a comedy, and the honesty you need and to have those two things meet up and have the execution just right, I always found very difficult.

I need to keep my ad-libbing skills honed and make sure I'm able to banter with people and treat topics a bit more light-heartedly. But as a stand-up, first and foremost, my job is to make sure that I can write the routine that hopefully people will talk about when something big happens.

I'm not the sort of comedian who wants to make audiences think about politics. I'm not clever in that way.

Writing and telling jokes is my favorite thing to do, and I want to be able to do that forever.

Trump is an amazing comedy writer without realizing it.

There's an infectiousness to comedy. It's meant to be shared and spread, so I feel like any message that you're talking about through the vehicle of comedy is going to get further than if you just straightforwardly said it.