I don't like comedy that makes me feel worse about the world than I already felt before I turned it on.
The longer I spent time on 'The Daily Show,' standing in front of a green screen pretending to report from war zones and hot spots around the world - most often from somewhere in the Middle East - the more I began to realize that 'The Daily Show' was radicalizing me.
Woody Allen's 'The Complete Prose' - It's just the best selection of comic writing by one author. You know it's good comedy when you get quite demoralised about yourself.
The fact that I'm shouting that I have Gangnam style makes people crack up. Imagine if Brad Pitt was singing the song - would it be funny? A twist is important when it comes to writing lyrics.
For me, comedy was deftly terrifying.
'The Big Bang Theory' has completely changed my life.
There was always another side to a joke, the side of the victim.
As a moviegoer, I'm always annoyed when a big joke is ruined in the trailer, but generally, it actually makes it play better.
Growing up as a comedian the most influential person on me was Jon Stewart. He showed that comedy could have a real tangible effect on the world. He showed that comedy could move the needle of society and that a comic can do real things and make a real contribution.
All those zany comedies have instilled a sense of pace in me.
I am not an educator and I'm not a journalist. I am a comedian. But I do truly believe that the point of comedy is to make the world around one better.
Sometimes I am so dry that people don't know I'm kidding and think I'm being serious. I enjoy this because their reactions are often funny.
Not enough comedy makes you feel something.
What I love about comedy is that it's unquestionably working. There are varying degrees of that, where there's something that makes you smile and is funny versus something that makes you hysterically laugh.
The male image has been so pulled down by situation comedy in the last 15 years, it is frightening. I don't like what has happened to the American male.
Comedy is good at analysing and dealing with evil because it doesn't present it as evil but a collection of banalities.
I make dramedies, but 'Tangerine' really has a lot of comedy, and I saw that it had a great effect - it reached a larger audience.
I do think that the audience thinks it's funny when you break, but if you do it all the time, it loses something.
You could believe that Sinbad could fight a skeleton because that's from a period in the past, a magical period. But if you had James Bond fighting a skeleton, it'd be almost comical.
It's good to make people laugh.
I played the tuba in high school. I wanted to be a member of the marching band. I thought, what can I play that has the most effect? What can I play to get people to laugh?
I'm not sure how a world leader reacts to the work of a clown.
Drama can feel like therapy whereas comedy feels like there's been a pressure and a weight lifted off of you.
Two similar faces, neither of which alone causes laughter, use laughter when they are together, by their resemblance.
There are things in low comedy that make people uncomfortable, and there are things in high comedy that make people bored.
