James Thurber Quotes

I have noticed that in plays where the characters on stage laugh a great deal, the people out front laugh very little.

The appreciative smile, the chuckle, the soundless mirth, so important to the success of comedy, cannot be understood unless one sits among the audience and feels the warmth created by the quality of laughter that the audience takes home with it.

I don't know if you know you're funny, but you enjoy being funny. I know I'm funny because people tell me I am, but when I watch myself, it doesn't make me laugh. Does that make sense? Because I know the jokes, and to me, I feel like I'm pulling the wool over people's eyes. And there are probably people who do not enjoy what I do.

In the Netherlands I read the first chapter of Exquisite Corpse to an audience that laughed in all the places I thought were funny - an experience I've never had in America!

Unless comedy touches me as well as amuses me, it leaves me with a sense of having wasted my evening. I go to the theatre to be moved to laughter, not to be tickled or bustled into it.

For me, one of the biggest thrills is going to a theater and going, "Oh, I got a laugh!" Because you never quite get to hear it [otherwise].

The scariest thing about screening a comedy... if you screen a drama, you know, there's no real way to tell in real time if people are enjoying it or not. But in a comedy, it's like, if people aren't laughing, it's sort of scary.

As a comedian, I don't know if they're laughing because it's funny or if they're laughing at me because I'm not funny. And I'm thinking, 'Who cares? They're laughing.' If you go on stage, and they're laughing at you full-on for 60 minutes? You know, whatever puts them in the seats.

Just because you're laughing, it doesn't mean the audience will, necessarily.

The audience is so important. Because there's something that I might think is super funny, but if it's just not getting the feedback, I have to let it go.

The major caveat in all of comedy is that it's all instinctive. There's no true criteria. There is no right or wrong. Ultimately, often I'm surprised at what an audience will or will not laugh at. I have to stay very, very open to an audiences first exposure to that material and how they react to it.

I remember seeing Eddie Murphy RAW and seeing people laughing and having a good time and that was the same response I was getting so I thought I was on to something.

You start to find a rhythm and usually if it makes me laugh or comment in the editing room then I knew that's what's going to happen in the audience. That first reaction is usually the right reaction.

To me, the stories that have always intrigued me are the stories of people leaving my movies and being affected by them. They walk home 20 blocks the wrong way. Or they lock themselves in their office. Or they find themselves weeping when in the shower after the film. And those intrigue me, because I know I've touched something inside them.

I love having made a film and watching it when it affects audiences in a positive way. It was always fun for me to hide in the back of a theater and watch Tootsie with an audience and hear them laugh. And it's gratifying 20 years later to imagine that they still can find it amusing.

Funny is funny. And if it's good, it travels.

You listen to the audience. The audience is wrong individually and always right collectively. If they don't laugh, it isn't funny. If they cough, it isn't interesting. If they walk out, you are in trouble.

Playing on stereotypes was meant to be humorous. If it doesn't tickle you in certain spots, it's not going to be funny. Falling down the stairs is a seriously dangerous thing, but watching it is HILARIOUS!

I'm really happy that I've been able to make people laugh and distract them from their day to day bullshit at a comedy show or because they enjoyed one of my CDs or TV specials, but I don't know how many people have actually had life changing thoughts because of it.

I hate losing laughs; they're rare things.

You can have a good vibe and a good feeling about something, but you never really know how it's going to be received and how an audience is going to react to it.

The humor I came up with is, for the most part, a bit crude or guttural, and many people aren't going to get it or enjoy it, but some do, and that means a lot to me - to know that I made someone laugh.

With a comedy, it's so important to see it with an audience and an audience who really wants to be there and is enthusiastic, otherwise it can be quite a traumatizing experience.

I think I'm the funniest guy in a room full of unfunny people.

Comedy is very important, yes. For one thing, it keeps you sane. But it's not really a conversion. I mean, it's marginally a conversion, because if people tune in or go to a nightclub or even watch television, and hear that a lot of other people are laughing at something you thought was not funny, at least it'll force you to reconsider.