Comedy Quotes

In comedy there are only two main parts. He who slaps and he who gets slapped.

Comedy is an escape, not from truth but from despair; a narrow escape into faith.

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.

He (Lenny Bruce) always suffered from verbal disabilities: a tendency to singsong, a habit of mumbling, a coy and uncomfortable relation with the mike. Only late at night, when he was working to a very hip crowd could he ever attain the energy level of the parent style. When he did, though, he produced the […]

Never had he (Lenny Bruce) achieved more perfectly his ideal of coming on like an oral jazzman. He didn’t want laughter anymore, he hated applause – ‘Please don’t applaud!’ he would beg. ‘It breaks my rhythm!’ – he just wanted to get so far down into his own head that he felt that he was […]

Comedy deflates the sense precisely so that the underlying lubricity and malice may bubble to the surface.

Dying is easy. Comedy is difficult.

Tragedy and comedy are but two aspects of what is real, and whether we see the tragic or the humorous is a matter of perspective.

Once you can laugh at your own weaknesses, you can move forward. Comedy breaks down walls. It opens up people. If you’re good, you can fill up those openings with something positive. Maybe you can combat some of the ugliness in the world.