Albert Brooks Quotes

Art has to change things, and if it was immediately acceptable it would not be doing the job.

Going to Catholic school was what fueled me into comedy. The nuns were so brutal so I used to try to make my friends laugh.

Since the goal of my programs is to show audiences how humor can both help them heal as well as deal with not-so-funny stuff, I decided to discuss the events of the previous week, the pain all of us were feeling, and how humor and some laughter might be beneficial.

Comedy arises out of necessity, because some things are so dark that you have to laugh about it.

When things are really painful, I turn it into comedy.

Real comedy doesn't just make people laugh and think, but makes them laugh and change.

Life is funny. If you don't laugh, you're in trouble.

It's a positive thing to talk about terrible things and make people laugh about them.

Times change. The farmer's daughter now tells jokes about the traveling salesman.

Sept. 11 jolted America out of its second gilded age.

Comedy can be a cathartic way to deal with personal trauma.

I miss the silliness of the Nineties. What would society be like if 9/11 never happened? If that silliness was extended forever?

I think 9/11 affected everybody in one way or another.

Trixie Mattel is a product of bad things that happened to me, and it's how I deal with things. It's wonderful.

If I can make myself laugh about something that I should be crying about, that's pretty good.

Sometimes it's difficult to laugh at certain things but comedy can help.

I can find the worst thing in the world funny. My humour is dark. If I'm talking about the worst situations in my life, it's like a comedy - you can laugh at my pain.

The world will be changed by western women.

The things we laugh at are awful while they are going on, but get funny when we look back. And other people laugh because they've been through it too. The closest thing to humor is tragedy.

Feeling different, feeling alienated, feeling persecuted, feeling that the only way to deal with the world is to laugh - because if you don't laugh you're going to cry and never stop crying - that's probably what's responsible for the Jews having developed such a great sense of humor. The people who had the greatest reason to weep, learned more than anyone else how to laugh.

The way I reacted to 9/11 was I decided I didn't want to do any movies that are sad or critical. I decided I didn't want to make my living depressing people or making them go home sick, so I just decided I wanted to do comedy for a while and study it for a while. It doesn't mean everybody should do that, but that was my reaction.

Every few hundred years in Western history there occurs a sharp transformation. Within a few short decades, society - its worldview, its basic values, its social and political structures, its art, its key institutions - rearranges itself. We are currently living through such a time.

The world around us is in a sea change, and I think the glory of art is that it cannot only survive change, it can lead it

In the Somme valley, the back of language broke. It could no longer carry its former meanings. World War I changed the life of words and images in art, radically and forever. It brought our culture into the age of mass-produced, industrialized death. This, at first, was indescribable.

As my poor father used to say In 1963, Once people start on all this Art Goodbye, moralitee! And what my father used to say Is good enough for me.