Steve Carell Quotes

The Canteen Boy, the reason you feel bad for him and you can laugh is because he, and I guess a lot of my characters, they don't notice they're getting made fun of. So they'll say something back that's not that great a quip, but in their mind they won the argument.

I think that a big part of comedy is being made fun of, and it is looking silly or looking stupid.

Unintentional comedy is comedy just the same.

I think a lot of humor is about distracting yourself. Pretend you're not trying to make it funny. Because for some reason the effort to be funny smells like sulphur in our culture.

Comedy needs to happen naturally and be in touch with the character. When you see that guy in your office that everybody laughs at, he doesn't think he's funny. He's just being him, and that's the joke.

My favorite kind of humor is basically, if it was happening to you, it wouldn't be funny, but to observe it, it's hilarious.

The Seinfeld motto: No learning, no hugging.

Comedy is unusual people in real situations; farce is real people in unusual situations.

I think there should be laughs in everything. Sometimes, it's a slammed door, a pie in the face or just a recognition of our frailties.

I must confess, I was born at a very early age.

It's not about trying to be funny all the time. It's more of a document that hopefully is funny.

I think at its best the American sense of humor is the same as the British sense of humor at its best, which is to be wry and ironic and self deprecating.

Humor is something that thrives between man's aspirations and his limitations. There is more logic in humor than in anything else. Because, you see, humor is truth.

I definitely prefer working in comedy over drama, but at the same time, when it comes to comedy, I tend to prefer comedies that have a great sense of truth to them and that come from an honest place.

I detest jokes - when somebody tells me one, I feel my IQ dropping; the brain cells start to disappear. But something is funny when the person delivering the line doesn't know it's funny or doesn't treat it as a joke. Maybe it comes from a place of truth, or it's a sort of rage against society.

It's both funny and sad which seem to me to be the two basic ingredients of good comedy.

I think we're the only jokeless show on television. I mean really, we have no setups and no punch lines. It's not a joke show. There are funny lines and funny moments but again the comedy is born of the human experience and awkward pauses are a great part of what it is to be human.

To deliver something deadpan is very difficult; I don't think people know how hard those jokes are.

Comedy is funny when it comes from truth, and that's always the rule of them. It's about how far you can push that boundary.

I'd love to do a comedy - something where a character has to use humor to navigate the absurdities of life.

I think mockumentaries are such well-trodden grounds for comedies. It has been done a lot, but it is because of that informal nature, it's such a fertile ground to be funny.

I think it's amusing to watch a naive, well-meaning character kind of undo more cynical characters - kind of like watching Laurel and Hardy or Charlie Chaplin.

Trying to be funny is arguably the least funny thing you can do.

Rob and I both have this strange sense of comedy which always involves us being the butt of our own jokes.

Woody Allen's 'The Complete Prose' - It's just the best selection of comic writing by one author. You know it's good comedy when you get quite demoralised about yourself.