Comedy Psychology Quotes

Most comedians are borderline psychotic. It's what makes their work interesting.

I don't think comedy necessarily comes from a dark place. But I do think what a lot of us have in common is that, growing up, being funny was a coping mechanism.

Anxiety and hostility seem to be a great part of good and bad humor. Examining humor too closely does seem to destroy it.

I felt audiences are happier to take comedy people who play darker people because there's a link between the psychosis of comedy and the psychosis of being a twisted character.

There are practical things which contribute to a joke's funniness. People will find a joke funnier if they are sitting closer together, if it's cold, if they've paid and if they are told it's funny beforehand.

At the Sahara, the seats are banked and most of the audience is looking down at the stage. Everybody in the business knows: Up for singers, down for comics. The people want to idealize a singer. They want to feel superior to a comic. You're trying to make them laugh. They can't laugh at someone they're looking up to.

I think that some laughter comes from escaped horror, doesn't it?

People who are innately funny are innately disturbed.

My theory about comedians is that their greatest fear is other people laughing at them. So comedy is an attempt to control and manipulate the thing they find most frightening.

Comedy is like a very cokey, druggy sugar. You get hits of comedy, and it's very, "More, give me more of that stuff," because serotonin is being released in the brain. So it's basically, everyone becomes serotonin junkies, and we are serotonin dealers. And that's what being a comedian is about.