Matt Groening Quotes

I think that a big part of comedy is being made fun of, and it is looking silly or looking stupid.

I'm like a sight gag.

Many people mistakenly think of farce as broad low comedy. In fact, it's polished high comedy.

In comedy, something may be more absurd, but you have to believe just as much as you do when you're doing drama.

Comedy is created when someone is trying very earnestly to do what he feels is the right thing to do at that moment.

What's fun about comedy is you're pushing things a little further than you would in a drama; you're pushing reality a little bit more.

Unintentional comedy is comedy just the same.

In the best farce today we start with some absurd premise as to character or situation, but if the premises be once granted we move logically enough to the ending.

When you take a character seriously, there's more room for comedy because you're not aware of how absurd you are.

I really like comedy. There's always a choice, when you're writing: you can either go for the joke or you can go for the story, the important stuff.

Comedy is unusual people in real situations; farce is real people in unusual situations.

Like I said, all comedy is based on exaggeration, big or small, whatever you can get away with.

I always try to keep in mind that while the characters in a farce may find themselves in outrageous dilemmas, and may behave in a way that the audience finds amusing, the characters themselves don't have the consolation of knowing they're in a comedy.

Comedy comes from conflict, from hatred.

Farce is tragedy played at a thousand revolutions per minute.

More eccentric characters can push pretty far, but if you stay on the side of reality, it's always funnier.

The first rule of comedy should be, you must be very lazy. Whoever works should be immediately removed.

At the end of the day I'm writing comedy. If you get too realistic as a comedy writer with your disasters, it stops being funny.

Comedy isn't just timing; it's about rooting out the funny in the real. You just bend reality to the left a little.

There's some sort of unspoken license... when outlandish things come out of an inanimate object, somehow it equals humor.

For me, comedy was deftly terrifying.

Comedy, surprisingly for a form that intends to bring joy and joviality, is always upsetting people. Jokes rely on broad strokes, stereotypes, caricatures, exaggerations and simplifications.

It's a fine line between hack and good comedy.

Louie Anderson thinks my thing is the absurdness of reality. That's what we do on 'Portlandia' all the time. I try to bring that absurdness of reality to everything.

When I'm writing the book I'm laughing at just how overblown the characters seemed. How full of himself he seems. But I didn't get far enough in the series to really drive the joke of it home.