Wendy Liebman Quotes

You can't be funny if you don't have good material.

I can't write a joke. I could never write. I do a lot of stories and I call them stories, but they're just comedy recitals on a given subject.

We all know funny people who can't get it down on the page - even funny writers who can't get it down on the page.

The only time I get sick of making people laugh is when I'm in a non-writing-joke mode, and I just can't seem to come up with anything new that's funny. That's a tough place to be as a comedian.

I'll think of the idea and then I'll write something down, then within that there will be a joke or two which is the original thing which I thought was funny.

I've been writing joke songs since I was a kid and it served me well at S.N.L. I can write those in my sleep. In fact, I have.

The trick is always to write in pairs because if at least two people find it funny, you've immediately halved the odds of it not being funny.

I love sketch comedy. My real goal is to do something with Albert Brooks. That would be my fantasy. I stay up night and day thinking up stuff he might find funny.

So while it is true that I find really dark stuff funny sometimes, it's also true that as a writer of books I want to have the whole range of human emotions.

First and foremost, I just want to write comedy.

David Letterman used to say, 'I wasn't the class clown, but I wrote for him,' and that's exactly it. You want to be known to be funny without having it pointed out.

Anything where I get to write a lot of jokes and have a lot of creative control - that's all I want.

Comedy. I think that's something I'd really like to do.

I think writers have become hypnotised by the number of jokes on the page at the expense of character.

In my mind, I was always a comedian who was going to branch into writing.

You can write jokes at any point of the day. Jokes are not that hard to write, or they shouldn't be when it is literally your job.

I'm the guy who gets uncomfortable. That's why I was able to write 'The 40-Year-Old Virgin' and 'Knocked Up.' I believe in those guys.

When you have a writing partner and you're writing a comedy, your goal is to make each other laugh.

And if you have great writing, it's really easy, but if it's not so great and you have to work a little harder, I could tell where the work needed to be done but comedy is just fun.

I write in reverse: Rather than come up with a narrative and write jokes for that narrative, I write jokes independently of the narrative, then I try to fit them in.

It takes up enough of my time and interest just working on comedy. I just enjoy it and love doing it.

When I was in high school I saw Steven Wright, a brilliant one-liner comedian, and I thought: 'That's what I should do; I should write one-liners.' And I did. My first album is mostly one-liners.

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.'

When you are in a room and your job is to write jokes 10 hours a day, your mind starts going to strange places.

It's hard for a comic to be joking when your lines can't be funny.