Comedy Quotes - Page 31

• The popular definition of tragedy is heavy drama in which everyone is killed in the last act, comedy being light drama in which everyone is married in the last act.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Drama, Light, Tragedy

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• Everything in comedy's got to be exactly right, which is why making a comedic film is kind of a difficult process, because, for most of the two years of shooting it and editing it and reshooting and all of that, it's not quite right. And it's only when you just at the end, you put the final polish on it, it becomes really funny again.

  John Cleese

  Two, Editing, Years

  "How John Cleese got his accidental start in comedy". "PBS NewsHour" with Judy Woodruff, www.pbs.org. June 19, 2015.

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• I think actual death will be a lot easier than dying on stage. Cause - you know - if you do [actual death] right, you can go looking good. Maybe with a little quip [like]: 'I loved everybody.' But dying on stage...Oh, God!

  Joan Rivers

  Reality, Thinking, Dying

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• Writing comedy is the greatest spiritual gift you can give to anybody anytime.

  Adriana Trigiani

  Spiritual, Writing, Giving

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• An improper art aims at exciting in the way of comedy the feeling of desire but the feeling which is proper to comic art is the feeling of joy.

  James Joyce

  Art, Joy, Feelings

  James Joyce, Kevin Barry, Conor Deane (2000). “Occasional, Critical, and Political Writing”, p.102, Oxford University Press, USA

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• If I'm saying a universal truth, but maybe it's something that people don't feel comfortable saying It's a strange take, but at the same time, what you're hitting on is kind of right. You can relate. That's the heart of comedy. You have to have a point of view. You gotta commit. And the more you commit to it, sometimes the funnier it gets.

  Vince Vaughn

  Heart, Views, People

  "Vince Vaughn: The Biggest Man in the Room" by Chris Jones, www.esquire.com. November 18, 2008.

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• Comedy defends the commonplace; tragedy explodes it.

  Mason Cooley

  Tragedy, Commonplace

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• Only the most lucid can see their love as comedy.

  Mason Cooley

  Love

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• It is easy to forget that the most important aspect of comedy, after all, its great saving grace, is its ambiguity. You can simultaneously laugh at a situation, and take it seriously.

  Stephen Fry

  Funny, Laughter, Humor

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• Robin [Williams] was a world treasure. As we mourn his tragic death, we must remember him for the great waves of laughter that he was able to illicit from us, how his humor and insights - though they came from a place of pain and uncertainty - connected us and reminded us of how flawed and fragile...how human we are. How we are capable of moments of inspired transcendence and others of unspeakable despair.

  Glenn Close

  Leadership, Wisdom, Pain

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• The whole object of comedy is to be yourself and the closer you get to that, the funnier you will be.

  Jerry Seinfeld

  Being Yourself, Whole, Objects

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• I think if you write humor, then people don't - you know - they don't give you that much credit. They tend to think you just dictate your stories into a tape recorder. And I'm not necessarily insulted by that, because I think that just means that it looks easy.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Mean, Thinking

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• Ponder, your comedies are woeful chaff:
  Write tragedies, when you would make us laugh.

  Horace Walpole

  Writing, Laughing, Tragedy

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• Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg apparently called President Obama directly to complain about NSA and how it spies on ordinary Americans. That's right, the guy who runs Facebook got mad at the NSA for spying on people. Talk about the pot unfriending the kettle!

  Jimmy Fallon

  Leadership, Running, Zuckerberg

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• Director Ken Burns revealed that his next documentary is about Franklin Roosevelt, and it's fourteen hours long...which sounds like too much, until you realize there's been over thirty hours of TV dedicated to Honey Boo Boo.

  Jimmy Fallon

  Reality, Long, History

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• Doing stand-up comedy is in the middle of a traffic jam getting everybody moving again.

  Jon Stewart

  Moving, Jam, Middle

  "Jon Stewart, Faking It and Making It". "Fresh Air" with Dave Davies, www.npr.org. July 22, 2005.

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• Cardinal Dolan, of course, has a very, very hard job: trying to hold up Catholic family values in sexually liberal New York City. I'm not saying New York is the Gay Mecca. But it's at least Gay-rusalem.

  Stephen Colbert

  Family, Leadership, Jobs

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• I gotta tell you, I do not envy whoever they try to put in David Letterman's chair. Folks those are some huge shoes to fill, and some really big pants.

  Stephen Colbert

  Leadership, Work, Shoes

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• For the first time in our history, the winners of the White House Turkey Pardon were chosen through a highly competitive online vote. And once again, Nate Silver completely nailed it. The guy is amazing.

  Barack Obama

  Leadership, Nature, Turkeys

  "Obama pardons two Thanksgiving turkeys with mercy and humour" by Adam Gabbatt, www.theguardian.com. November 21, 2012.

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• Let's face it, Fox News, you'll miss me when I'm gone. It'll be harder to convince the public that Hillary Clinton was born in Kenya.

  Barack Obama

  Missing, News, Gone

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• To all the young people out there who think money and fame is important: that's only a small piece of the pie. You need an education to be totally secure in life. I feel very secure I can go get a real job now.

  Shaquille O'Neal

  Leadership, Education, Wisdom

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• In Maureen Owen's perfectly titled Erosion's Pull, words and lines map, unmap, and revamp our everyday postcontemporary geographies: ironies and ambiguities, surrealistic conundrums, kaleidoscopic comedies, puzzlements, certain and uncertain loves and losses.

  Susan Howe

  Loss, Erosion, Everyday

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• I still have that new senator smell.

  Cory Booker

  Work, Smell, Politics

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• I would rather die than be in the United States Senate. I would be bored to death. Could you imagine me, banging around that chamber with 99 other people, asking for a motion on the amendment in the subcommittee? Forget it...You'd watch me just walk out and walk right into the Potomac River and drown. That would be it.

  Chris Christie

  Leadership, Work, Reality

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• With comedy, I like to not rehearse and just have fun with it, because I think being spontaneous is the best thing for a comedy, in my opinion.

  Diora Baird

  Fun, Thinking, Opinion

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