Debra Messing Quotes

I think Seth McFarlane is brilliant, and I think 'Family Guy' should get an Emmy for sure.

With Saturday Night Live you're looking for any hook, any way to stay on the show.

I don't aim it at anybody specific, I don't aim my characters to make old people laugh or young people or professionals or blue collar, just whatever I think is going to be funny and it just so happens that.

Audiences and critics they don't like seeing what happens in real life. Why do you think comedies make all the money at the box office? People want to go and laugh. I can understand that.

I think our nation's at war with radical Islam. The primary goal of these groups is to attack our nation. Washington's a prime target.

By TV standards - I'm not comparing it to manual labor by any means - by TV comedy standards, it is the hardest job I will ever, ever have. There is nothing that could be harder. I mean, when you combine the amount of writing that has to be done - sharp writing - with the fact that you then take it to the street and improvise with both celebrities who have no idea what's going to happen and real people who are not actors or comedians who don't even know I'm about to talk to them... It's lightning in a bottle every time.

I'd done light comedy. In some quarters, About Last Night... is a romantic comedy. So it wasn't like I'd been doing Sophie's Choice my entire career. But for whatever reason, nobody had really given me the room or the ability to be out and out funny. And Lorne [Michaels] and Mike [Myers] and Chris [Farley] and Dana [Carvey], that crop really helped me do that.

I keep doing specials because I think there are a lot of people who make movies and TV who are fans of comedy - if they start to like you, they'll get a project going and call you in.

It's a lot of work to put a brand-new monologue and a brand-new show on the air and find comedy every single day. It's challenging and it's the hardest thing I have ever done, but it's the best-suited thing for me. The more relaxed I get and the more confident I feel, the more I get to play and be myself...

I think that people see that Sandra Bullock has an ability to laugh at herself and you just don't find that too often.

I'm just going to keep doing comedy because I don't know what else to do. I have no other applicable skills.

When you think about it there's never really been a realistic exposition of Hollywood, I mean - from the inside - showing Hollywood what it can do, what it has done, to people.

Stand-up is a real art form in itself and one that I really think to be good at you have to devote your entire life to. It's the really, really good ones that end up getting to do the things that I like to do: movies, TV shows, and stuff like that. It's a really hard gig and it just never called to me.

They ask me what the biggest thing I have going on right now is, and I usually say, "I think this interview?" And then they don't get that it's a joke. So then I say, Yogi Bear 3D. That's my default.

I think being successful in comedy is being funny and making jokes - anything beyond that is the icing on the cake.

Ed Simmons and I became stars in the emerging medium of television. We were new and fresh, just like TV at the time, so we automatically became 'THE' comedy writers for television.

I hope and assume that every good comedy writer, no matter the age, has a moment where they discover how great Cheers is.

I think one of the hardest things to do in film or TV is to make something feel real, which is weird because it's about being a person, and life is something that everyone making films and TV can relate to.

Stand-up comedy had an interesting effect on me in terms of how I started to think about constructing things, because I really loved the interstices, the linkages, or lack thereof.

[Marla, Shar and I] all have had very public breakups, so I think people know they can relate with us in one way or another. And this is one of the few reality shows where they didn't have the cameras right in people's faces. Like when we were sitting around the table talking with the divorced people, the cameras were way back. And we just listened. Sometimes people just need an ear.

The little details really connect for people in ways I never realized before.I think that's why some of the movies have done well, because people are relating to things that I'm willing to expose.

I always loved comedy, but it never seemed like something that I could do professionally.

I always think of comedy as being spontaneous, and yet everything about filmmaking is not spontaneous.

Writing is the great skill, the creative skill. The acting is more an interpretative skill. And the thrill for me is the moment when I think of something. And then the challenge is how to get that funny idea to work in terms of the structure and that kind of thing, which is - and that's what I really love doing.