Paul Auster Quotes

You just tell a good story where you're funny and it makes people laugh.

Comedy becomes intensified in short scenes.

I'd like to make you laugh for about ten minutes though I'm gonna be on for an hour.

Comedy is such a personal thing. Everybody can cry at the same thing, but it's a lot harder to get everyone to laugh at the same thing.

I love physical comedy. I love Oscar Wilde, I love Shakespeare comedies, I love improv.

I used to have this joke: 'Every hallway is a runway.'

The funniest line in English is 'Get it?' When you say that, everyone chortles.

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.'

The moment you think of a joke is the best moment.

The comedian just wants to get a laugh.

Humor is the ultimate truth. If it’s not true, the joke is not funny.

My only rule about a joke is that it should be funny.

I don't know how to tell a joke. I never tell jokes. I can tell stories that happened to me... anecdotes. But never a joke.

Humor is the only way to tell a story. Especially the dark ones.

The most important thing in comedy - apart from empathy, which I think is important even if disguised - is surprise. I like surprising people with the fact that something's even a joke at all.

If we live inside a bad joke, it is up to us to learn, at best and worst, to tell it well.

Jokes do finish themselves. I really do see them as ongoing conversations about personal themes that I ruminate on.

I don't like the phrase shock value. Surprise is essential in comedy, and if people are shocked by what I consider merely surprising, then that's their shock. But there is no joke without surprise.

Here's what I really love: I love a funny story that I can tag a serious line on the end of.

With comedians, you have that understanding that we're trying to get laughs.

Comedy is a very approval-oriented field.

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.

For me, if you distill comedy down, it is surprise and the unexpected. That has to be it on its most base level, in any form.

Jackie Gleason said that comedy is the most exacting form of dramatic art, because it has an instant critic: laughter.

For comedy, timing is key.