Lily Tomlin Quotes

Usually, my favorite joke is whichever joke I most recently came up with that surprised me the first time I thought of it.

I'm actually a very lazy person. Most of the time, I'm happy to sit around and stare. Or watch bad TV soaps. It's quite rare for me to get inspired by anything, but it could be something small. A view of the Serpentine. A snatch of music. Or a little shred of conversation overheard on a bus, such as, 'You also will marry someone of my choice.'

What Romantic terminology called genius or talent or inspiration is nothing other than finding the right road empirically, following one's nose, taking shortcuts.

When I first started looking at Twitter, I followed people like Steve Martin, who will just write the funniest non sequiturs now and then, which I thought was really fun. That's kind of the road I've taken. Every now and then, something comes into your mind and you put it out there. It's very innocuous. I think it's kind of fun.

Some people just come in, do it and they know it's right. It turns out better than you imagined it was going to sound. When that happens, you take it as a gift.

You can't plan to write a great song. It just happens to you. It drops in your lap. It's the same thing with a woman.

People often ask me how I make things funny. I don't make things funny.

Comedy is surprise. Comedy is not something that you can, necessarily, do twice.

People are hungry for what's happening right now in the world.

The heart and soul of pop is newness, excitement, innovation.

Artists always try to make something that is going to be relevant and up-to-the-minute.

Chance is the only source of true novelty.

Timing is everything. That's a cliche. Now. If I'd said that a long time ago, I'd have been original.

Coming up with a funny joke is like falling in love: It can hit you any time, anywhere. Having said that, the more you put yourself out there, the better your odds will be.

A good film to me is like lightning in a bottle. I used to think that meant hit and run. But then I've changed my definition about what lightning in a bottle means. I think it means that you wait for that surprising moment that you really didn't expect would happen, as good as it may have gone in rehearsal.

I don't really like to just sit down at a computer and write because that tends to be a little forced. Sometimes the funniest ideas just happen in the moment, when you're talking to people, or you notice something.

I cant duplicate my own successes, because part of the creation of that effect is making something happen that you didn't expect

I'm not original, but I strive toward it as much as possible. I tried really hard on Weekend Update to do something that I considered original, which was, I tried to cut all cleverness out of the joke.

Only free time, imagination, creativity, and an ability to disappear will help you deliver value that nobody ever delivered before in the history of mankind.

I was always being creative. I could never have played a defensive role because I would have been forced to destroy the other player's creativity.

You try to be as original as you can be without thinking about statistics. You just go from the soul and from the heart.

The artist is always beginning. Any work of art which is not a beginning, an invention, a discovery is of little worth.

I truly think that you can't go and stalk your material, you have to leave the door open and whatever chooses you, chooses you. You can't go and wrestle it to the ground.

The element of discovery is very important. I don't repeat myself well. I want and need that stimulus of walking forward from one new world to another. There is something demoralizing about going back to a place to retake pictures. You can no longer see your subjects in a fresh eye; you keep comparing them with the pictures you hold in your memory. [The] world was full of discoveries waiting to be made...(as a photographer) I could share the things I saw and learned...you would react to something all others might walk by.

It all must start with an inspired, spontaneous idea.