Paula Patton Quotes

You have to be so honest in comedy.

I think you need to have the guts to not use comedy. Often, the people that work in comedy use a joke to avoid contemplation.

I think comedy stems from being honest, often painfully so. I hope I can achieve that perspective in my own life and also have fun.

If you tell the truth about how you're feeling, it becomes funny.

The one thing you're most reluctant to tell. That's where the comedy is.

Sure, I am funny and have a good sense of humor. Mostly, though, I just tell the truth. The internal dialogue people have in their heads - I just write it.

I strive for honesty because I think that's where the funniest stuff comes from.

What all my favorite comedians have in common is extraordinary honesty.

I think for me the trick is not to aim to impress or to even try to make people laugh but instead to tell the truth.

Humor is a show of both strength and of vulnerability: you are willing to make the first move but you are trusting in the response of your listener.

I think most of the actors that I know that I think are good are kind of funny people. There's just something about being alive to the truth of a moment that makes a good joke that also makes a good actor.

When you're doing comedy, you're not trying to be funny. I think things are funny when the character is taking it totally seriously. I think when people are winking, it becomes slapstick, it becomes something else.

The moment I do any puppy dog acting, I think the joke is dead. It's in the truth of how I play it, and the real painful honesty that I approach my performance with.

On some level in acting, what you're trying to find is truth, because when it's true is when it's also funny.

You can be funny and say what you mean; these ideas are not mutually exclusive. Some of the best jokes came from people who meant it. See: Pryor, Bruce, Carlin, etc.

I think comedy has to come from a real place. It has to come from an honest place.

You shouldn't get too close to the truth, because then maybe you stop being funny.

I'm not funny. What I am is brave.

I primarily have had my career in comedy, and that is something that I have never been too concerned about because I know there is really no room for vanity in comedy. Comedy comes from pain and it is a lot easier to empathize with somebody who is out of shape.

People often can't separate, or can't understand, that to be funny is to be serious; it's a way of pulling people in and not scaring them off. I think a lot of the funny stuff, underneath it, there's a deep anxiety going on.

I definitely prefer working in comedy over drama, but at the same time, when it comes to comedy, I tend to prefer comedies that have a great sense of truth to them and that come from an honest place.

Actually being funny is mostly telling the truth about things.

Humorists can never start to take themselves seriously. It's literary suicide.

Comedians, we're just people who whine. But we happen to be funny when we whine.

The older I've gotten, the more the need to exert comedy no matter how tragic a character I may be portraying because they are essentials for presenting truth.