Strangely enough, I don't mention my sister too much in my columns because she nags me and says, 'Don't make me look foolish. Don't write nonsense about me. Don't make jokes about me.'
Times change. The farmer's daughter now tells jokes about the traveling salesman.
Everybody I know who is funny, it's in them. You can teach timing, or some people are able to tell a joke, though I don't like to tell jokes. But I think you have to be born with a sense of humor and a sense of timing.
It is requisite for the relaxation of the mind that we make use, from time to time, of playful deeds and jokes.
Comedy Central is what these young people are viewing. The network speaks to their audience, which is saying, 'Give me fast jokes. Give me party stories and party language.'
It's tough being a dictator, but I've always thought it must be tougher being a hanger-on to a dictator. The late nights spent listening to his crazed ranting, the weary rictus grin from smiling at bad jokes, the draining knowledge that one misjudged comment could land you on the chopping block.
Zac Efron is like a brother who's just goofy and crazy. He plays a lot of practical jokes.
I didn't want to do a throwaway, mindless movie with fart jokes just to make 6-year-olds laugh. I want to provide my children with some substance.
I don't care if my jokes are appropriate for a kid.
I reserve the right to tell shaggy dog stories or even common jokes as part of what I'm doing. I don't give a damn if half the audience walks out.
One of the interesting things about Twitter is looking how famous people choose to use it. Take someone like Steve Martin, who I follow: it's all sorts of comic gems, nothing private, nothing personal - all jokes. Other celebrities are overtly personal - like Charlie Sheen. I do a mix of observations and updates.
If you want anything done well, do it yourself. This is why most people laugh at their own jokes.
I think the more the actor lets you know what he thinks of the character, the less the audience cares - like a comedian who laughs at his own jokes.
I'm not too keen on jokes that are one-liners. I want the situation to be funny.
A surprising amount of my jokes sound very implausible but are true.
I guess my idea of a good audience is one that's quiet and listens, but also that's alive: they respond, they're getting the jokes, they're with me. And that' s been happening.
I would write 100 jokes a day. Most of them were terrible. But I just said, 'I'll write more than everybody else, and that's how I'll get better.'
I feel like comedy is where I'm most at ease, but I also have an allergy to silly jokes.
I'm not trying to prove anything for the right or the left. Which gives me freedom to make jokes about either side, too.
Man, after all my grandma put into me learning the piano, that was a hard day, telling her I was telling jokes for a living.
I made my living in comedy, but I'm not a silly person. I've got all these sides to me. Even in my movies that I've written myself, the characters sometimes border on great anger or nutsiness or other kinds of behavior. I'm not just doing fart jokes for two hours.
I don't want to be 60 years old standing on stage telling some jokes. I want my life to mean something.
As a comedian who's used to, like, punching the jokes, it's hard to teach yourself that that's not the strong choice in the sense that you have to really have to dial it back.
Anything traumatic in my life I've always dealt with through jokes and comedy.
It got very tedious saying the same jokes in the same way with the same attitude.
I think any decent comedy worth its salt has to have heart, otherwise it's just a bunch of jokes. I think people enjoy comedies that have a heart and soul to them.
It had more layers than an onion. These writers meant business. There was a level for everybody. Your major could be celestial mechanics, and there'd be celestial-mechanics jokes.
I exaggerate all our selves, our beings. I make fun of everything: of our life and what we are. But I don't tell jokes, really. I just exaggerate life, and it comes out funny.
I like situational comedy when people are being completely serious and yet you can find something extremely funny, not jokes.
I like smart jokes, I like dumb jokes, and I like dumb jokes done smartly.
I think the best romantic comedies are hard funny - no soft jokes, but ones that make you, like, guffaw. I also think that they have to make you feel good, ideally, and make you feel warm inside at the end.
I can tell jokes. I can talk to the audience. I can relax. I can change my songs whenever I want. I can change the tempos. I can change the mood, because I'm in charge.
I didn't want to do comedy again. It is way harder when you are doing comedy. You can't just concentrate on the character and the plot. In comedy, the writers, instead of obsessing about character and plot, obsess about the jokes.
My jokes are in my head and I have a duplicate copy of my jokes in a lot of British comics' heads, where they are safe.
Tweeting is a great way to practice writing jokes, but there is so much more to comedy writing than just jokes. Jokes are a necessity, but you also have to learn how to write characters, to break a story, to keep coherence between episodes. I've learned more by being a TV writer than I ever could've on my own.
I love working with older actors because number one, I can learn so much from them because they have so much experience. And it's fun to hear their stories from their era, some of the jokes.
