I think I have a natural, if I can say that, got a kind of natural ability in comedy.
I'm not a joke guy; I'm not a stand-up comic.
I regard the writing of humor as a supreme artistic challenge.
I can make the best fart noises. I can make, like, 10 different sounds at different levels.
Over the past 50 years Bob Hope employed 88 joke writers who supplied him with more than one million gags, and he still couldn't make me laugh.
I'm not as serious of a person as people make me out to be. Most people would think that I would be less successful in comedy, but I can crack a joke as well as anyone else.
Humour ended up being a really useful skill when it came time to be an international television celebrity.
Anyone who has the kind of inventive and inspired comic sensibility to be able to do that kind of work must be pretty talented.
It's true; I have a skill and it's... it has not related to acting, it's not related to auditions, it's not related to studios, not related to public whim. It's whether I'm funny or not and whether I can entertain people.
I just loved stand-up comics as a kid. I'd watch them on 'The Tonight Show,' and I thought what a great craft it was to come out on stage with no instrument or anything and be able to entertain people.
The ability to be funny is pretty widespread in the population.
I'm probably not very good at rom-com, being funny on demand; I'll leave that to the comedians.
There's an elusive element to comedy, but nobody gets it for free. That's why comedians seldom criticise each other.
Jack Benny, Fred Allen. Their jokes were wonderful. It takes skill to be funny. The timing of Jack Benny was so fine. It is a form of genius for which we should be grateful.
When I turned about 12 or 13, I realised that being funny wasn't about remembering jokes. It was about creating them.
Eddie Murphy is just so off-the-cuff and can make anything funny. You hope that someday you'll acquire that skill, but maybe you're born with that.
Good humor isn't a trait of character, it is an art which requires practice.
