Martin Landau Quotes

When you do a good comedy show, you have to understand that if you don't have drama or sad moments, then the comedy turns into a clowning kind of situation.

I always found that drama, really good drama, has a lot of comedy in it.

I find Spike Jones' movies to be really very inventive and funny, but they're really sad and touching and really key into the different facets of the human experience.

To be a comedian, you have to have some darkness behind it. I certainly draw on my past, and it helps.

If you want to reach any kind of poignancy or meaning a lot of times, coming from comedy is the best way to get there.

Sometimes when you write something on the page, it can seem very funny, but when you act it out - and this happens to me a lot, actually - the melancholy of the situation becomes more front and center.

I'm trying to make sure that there's comedy as well as sadness. It makes the sadness more memorable.

I think any decent comedy worth its salt has to have heart, otherwise it's just a bunch of jokes. I think people enjoy comedies that have a heart and soul to them.

For comedy, timing is key.

I think that sometimes only comedians can reach the peaks of tragedy.

I try to find humor in everything I do, because I think all great plays - even great tragedies - have enormous humor in them.

I use humour a lot. My foundation is tragic, but my appearance is humorous.

Humour and high seriousness... Perfect bedfellows, I think. Though I usually phrase it in terms of comedy and darkness. Comedy without darkness rapidly becomes trivial. And darkness without comedy rapidly becomes unbearable.

Comedy is so hard; it's so much harder than drama. The pacing of it, the energy of it.

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

I think that there's a fine line between comedy and drama.

It's both funny and sad which seem to me to be the two basic ingredients of good comedy.

A good comedy's very hard to make, so good comic writing I really enjoy.

Dark comedy is very difficult. You have to bring the audience in and push them away at the same time.

In order to be able to write a good joke, you have to find the truth.

A good comic explores the imagination, but it's always got to have those notes of truth running through it.

Dying is easy; comedy is hard.

Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.

If you don't like the people, you're just doing a sketch. Which, in most cases, is comedy minus some emotional backbone.

In general, I think comedy is more difficult to write, to direct, and to act successfully.