Jimmy Kimmel still comes across like a guy who crashed a party and got caught at it, yet adamantly refuses to leave.
I am forced, as I have often said, to try to make myself laugh, that I may not cry: for one or other I must do.
There's nothing less funny than trying to force funny.
People who laugh so heartily at what they themselves have said, when it is not funny, dispense us accordingly, by taking upon themselves the responsibility for the mirth, from joining in it.
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.
After a while, a joke, if you say it too much, just becomes contrived, or fake-sounding.
Trying to be funny is arguably the least funny thing you can do.
When I look at a lot of older stuff that I've written, I think one sign of amateur humor writing is when you see people trying too hard.
When I watch TV I can tell when someone is punching the joke and telling me when to laugh (I’ll decide when to laugh, thank you very much).
I have an aversion to comedy where everybody speaks in punchlines.
If you work at comedy too laboriously, you can kill what's funny in the joke.
It's really crucial to achieve that balance with a film like this, cause it is unique and witty and then there's the tendency to force that. It becomes contrived and I know the feeling like, give me a fork that I can stab in my eye in those kinds of movies.
I just don't like filming scenes where it's like, that's not how people talk. People aren't saying a joke every five seconds.
If you try to be funny, you're not being funny.
I pity the fellow who has to create a dialect or paraphrase the dictionary to get laughs. I can't spell, but I have never stooped to spell cat with a 'k' to get at your funny bone. I love a drink, but I never encouraged drunkenness by harping on its alleged funny side.
The State trained us to make other people's terrible jokes work, which is the other part of the game when you're here.
At home in my room, I'm funny, but if I'm commissioned to be that, I don't feel very funny.
Sometimes, at parties, people demand I tell a joke. It's like pointing a gun at my feet and telling me to dance.
My job changes very little because I've found that the more you try to be funny, the less funny you become.
I don't like forcing comedy and people just trying to do things just to find a funny beat all the time.
When you people have a set up joke and the joke is set up straight and the words are just well written, I always say "C'mon, humans don't speak that way."
A lot of stand-up comedy is embarrassing: too many idiots doing it in orange neckties against brick walls. I find most sitcoms embarrassing, too, because they seem so forced.
I don't have any favourites, but I like situational comedies, not forced ones.
Perpetual aiming at wit is a very bad part of conversation. It is done to support a character: it generally fails; it is a sort of insult on the company, and a restraint upon the speaker.
I'm always in situations where you can't be funny, and yet I want to do it anyway.
