Bryant H. McGill Quotes

Much of the best humor is found in the frequently tragic reality of human experience.

Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.

I don't really find things funny unless they're deeply tragic at the same time. I think if you're funny just for the sake of being funny, it's just frivolous nonsense. To me, all the best comic plays have been written about really serious and rather bleak things.

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

I find myself laughing at really bad situations.

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.

Comedy defends the commonplace; tragedy explodes it.

I think you can tell the human condition better through comedy.

I think that sometimes only comedians can reach the peaks of tragedy.

I think Britain has this tradition which suggests that if you make the readers laugh too much, you can't really be serious. Whereas, I think one of the functions laughter can perform in a book, as in life, is that it's a reaction to genuine horror.

I like a person who knows how to say something dark at a very dark moment. The darker the moment and the darker the comic, the better. Something that is so wrong on all levels.

If you stretch tragedy, it will always become comedy. That's the comedy that I like.

There are some things so serious you have to laugh at them.

The difference between tragedy and comedy: Tragedy is something awful happening to somebody else, while comedy is something awful happening to somebody else.

'The Sundial' is written with the kind of humor that would make a guillotine laugh.

All people are sad clowns. That's the key to comedy - and it's a buffer against reality.

I think a joke is a form of truth-telling. A good joke that's absurd contains elements of our daily darkness and also a possibility to escape that darkness. So, for me, humor is an attempt to capture everyday tragedy and everyday hopeful moments that we experience all of the time.

All comedy is funny because it tells us truths that we recognise through laughter, but that doesn't mean it can't be unnerving. Think of 'Fawlty Towers'; it can be very, very dark, but by God, it's funny. The two things are not in opposition.

I like dark humor. I think the world is very funny and tragic, and my photographs are basically dark Jewish humor.

I naturally think in terms of comedy whenever I see anything because tragedy is so close to comedy, so I like to add the tragedy to the comedy or a little bit of comedy to the tragedy in order to make them both feel more real to me.

I think you figure out how to be funny by necessity. It's not a natural thing, being funny in the face of tragedy is kind of demented.

There's comedy even in tragedy. There's comedy in life. And in 'Castle', we go for that comedy.

Sometimes in the most tragic situation, something just profoundly funny happens.

I love inappropriate humour. What else are you going to do? You have to laugh.

As you know it is a comedy so everything is a little bit pushed. That's what's funny about this kind of movie is you can laugh about the absurdity, and the bad side of life.