Paul F. Tompkins Quotes

What I've found is that humans do laugh at the same things everywhere.

If you try to create something that everybody can relate to, you're gonna make something that nobody can relate to.

I think no matter where you're from, you're going to be laughing about stuff going on around you.

The cool thing about superheroes is that they all have these very human roots, and that brings them all together and makes them all the same, in a way.

One of my big philosophies is that fighting is the sport that crosses all borders. I don't care what color you are, what country you come from or what language you speak, fighting is in our DNA. We get it and we like it.

With good music, yes, we can bring people together because a good song will touch your soul no matter what and where it is coming from.

Bill Monroe is not singing about life in America. He's singing about life in Kentucky and Tennessee. And yet it's had this tremendous impact, not just in America but in the world. Why is Bill Monroe's hyper-regional music so universal? We can be so different and yet still share a tremendous amount.

Comedies are very hard to do. They are difficult. Unless there's the Judd Apatow school, where they're like okay, we know that, we're going to do those. Or unless it's something that's far to the other side.

A novel which survives, which withstands and outlives time, does do something more than merely survive. It does not stand still. It accumulates round itself the understanding of all these persons who bring to it something of their own. It acquires associations, it becomes a form of experience in itself, so that two people who meet can often make friends, find an approach to each other, because of this one great common experience they have had.

It's already years ago now, but there's that South Korean music artist Psy, who had that hit song and it was a hit song here. I'm like, "Wait a minute. There's a chance. There's a way we can have language not be such an important part of comedy."

Human beings are better and lazier than their rules and instructions.

Men have been wise in many different modes; but they have always laughed the same way.

Believe it or not, that was the first time I recognized that in some ways she was just like the rest of us.

Sometimes a joke that doesn't work just needs a breath or a little word or the tiniest little change to be fixed.

It is the ordinariness of us that is the same in all of us.

God has a sense of humor. If you don't believe me, tomorrow go to wal-mart and just look at people.

In every man there is something of all men.

The active part of man consists of powerful instincts.

It aint about black or white cause we're human

The hearts of all men dwell in the same wilderness.

One of the biggest lessons I also learned from living with Elvis and loving him for so many years was that we're all human, and no matter what level one has reached in terms of fame, they're still human beings.

The extent to which human aggression exemplifies innate tendencies is not clear.

I want to look at my audience and see all walks of life. I want to do something for everybody.

It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.

There is nothing more innately human than the tendency to transmute what has become customary into what has been divinely ordained.