Mitchell Hurwitz Quotes

'Playing House' works because we're being supremely honest to what we think is funny and not what we think other people think is funny.

I don't consciously try to make things difficult as much as I try to make them a little different. I like all kinds of laughs. I tried to make a show that elicit groans, guffaws, chuckles, boos.

Write what makes you laugh not what you think will make someone else laugh.

In fifth grade, we had to write a story and read it in front of the class. When I read mine out, the class were just belly laughing. And I remember being like, 'This is the coolest!' So I want to dedicate my life to trying to make people laugh. I can't imagine doing anything else.

When I got on Stern I realized that this was the one job where you could be really honest and open, almost like Richard Pryor or something. You can be honest about your life and get laughs.

I want to make videos that, if I didn't know myself, I'd want to watch. As long as I'm making myself laugh, I'm usually having a good time. That's how I know I've made a video that I'm proud of: I've made myself laugh.

The only way I was going to be funny was if I was myself, and either you liked it, or you didn't. Either you got on my train, or you didn't. Freeing myself of this idea that I had to fit a certain mold was when I was able to be my funniest.

I love the privilege of looking back on my life every three years, turning it into a comedy show, and sharing it with an audience. It's incredibly cathartic.

I don't have any writers. I never get a laugh with somebody else's jokes. I can't do it justice.

I just write what I think is funny. I don't care who watches it.

Why should I waste my good time making a straight dramatic film? The people who can't make you laugh can do that.

I love telling stories and acting and entertaining people. I don't want to make fun of people.

I love to make people laugh, and do things that are surprising and different.

I could not sit seriously down to write a serious Romance under any other motive than to save my life, & if it were indispensable for me to keep it up & never relax into laughing at myself or other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter. No - I must keep my own style & go on in my own way; and though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other.

I started writing because it was about making my friends laugh, and when you're talking to your friends, you can't bullshit.

I do like to make films with a political theme, but sometimes it's nice simply to make people laugh. That's the hardest thing to do in fact.

There is something about being a director where, for me personally, I get to . . . it's the closest I'll ever come to being able to be a stand up. And to use my particular sense of humor, and hear people laughing, without me having to stand up in front of an audience and tell jokes.

I don't write jokes first. I write down topics. I think of what I want to talk about, and then I write the jokes - they don't write me... And even if you don't think it's funny, you won't think it's boring. You might disagree, but you'll listen. And maybe even laugh as you disagree.

I am an artist who's just tryin' to do something different, and basically not caring about everybody's opinions and wanting to follow what everybody else is doing. At the same time, I know when to be serious, but I know when to joke.

If you just write the kinds of stories you think others will want to read, you'll be competing with cartoonists who are far more enthusiastic for that kind of comic than you are, and they'll kick your ass every time.

I loved the old stories in National Lampoon, like the original story the movie Vacation was based on. I used to laugh at them until I cried.

I wasn't a class clown, I just found at an early age that I was able to make people laugh. So I mostly wrote funny stuff instead of writing what I was supposed to be writing.

To me, the trick is not how can I make people laugh. It is, how can I make people laugh in a different way.

I prefer writing originals.

I was fooling everyone by surrounding myself with funny people. But then I put myself out there - writing my own sketches, going on stage with nobody surrounding me - and for some reason people were still laughing.