Paul F. Tompkins Quotes

I think one of the big things about comedy is the ability for the audience to identify.

Dramas make me laugh. The other day, I saw 'The Place Beyond the Pines,' and I was giggling the whole time. I laugh when I'm uncomfortable.

Comedy is such a personal thing. Everybody can cry at the same thing, but it's a lot harder to get everyone to laugh at the same thing.

I think a lot of humor is about distracting yourself. Pretend you're not trying to make it funny. Because for some reason the effort to be funny smells like sulphur in our culture.

I suppose I look for humor in most situations because it humanizes things; it makes a character much more three-dimensional if there's some kind of humor. Not necessarily laugh-out-loud type of stuff, just a sense that there is a humorous edge to things. I do like that.

Everybody I know who is funny, it's in them. You can teach timing, or some people are able to tell a joke, though I don't like to tell jokes. But I think you have to be born with a sense of humor and a sense of timing.

I like to describe my stuff as observational comedy.

I think there are different kinds of comedians, and I prefer the clowns who are going: 'I'm an idiot, aren't we all a bit like this, laugh at me.' Whereas, a lot of other comedians are saying: 'Aren't I clever? You want to be me, aren't I cool? Revere me.' Which is fine. But that's not my bag.

I am edgy, raw, offensive, vulgar, untruthful, but intelligent. My jokes are always realistic. I do not make fun of children or people who cannot fight back. That is my limitation.

If you can find the line between sympathetic and creepy, you have reached a very funny area.

I can cry at the drop of the pin. But comedy is hard for me; it's the timing.

Transforming a line like that makes it into a belly laugh instead of a laugh against us.

Almost anything can be funny if said the right way - but it has to be said the right way.

Soon I learned that the worse the puns and jokes, the funnier they could be, if you knew how to deliver them.

I'd rather get a good clean laugh with good material, than an easy laugh by swearing or shocking. That's not clever or comedic, anybody can get a laugh that way, it's too easy.

I make fun of situations and try and find the humor in things, but it's never at the expense of the other guy.

There are really two types of laughter on the part of the spectator. There is the laughter of recognition - which means seeing things you're familiar with and laughing at yourself. But there's also hysterical laughter - a way of dealing with the things we see that upset us.

What I've always said about comedy is if you do it in the right way, you can say anything to anybody because they know where you're coming from. They know it's not malicious.

The man with the real sense of humor is the man who can put himself in the spectator's place and laugh at his own misfortune.

I don't do jokes. The characters are my jokes.

I can tell how honest a joke is or how true a joke is by how fast the laughs come.

I think humor is such a personal thing, and you put a microphone in somebody's face, they're going to say something that offends somebody.

Comedy is all about the pause.

My brand of humor is trying to play the situation as real as possible because I'm not the type of guy who is a joke a minute.

There's not many comedy characters that make me laugh as much as The Rock does; it's nice to have a big muscly guy being funny and stupid.