Howard Jacobson Quotes

You can channel a lot within a comic framework, and I think 'The Guard' had a lot going on outside of the comedy, which is satisfying.

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.

Comedians play off of social commentary.

The liveliest effusions of wit and humour are simply what the reader of a novel has a right to expect.

'The Dictator' - well, that was just a comedy, and I suppose the morality was incidental. It was just something to try and make people laugh rather than being a serious thing.

Stand-up and comedy is the place where we are supposed to be able to make fun of all of the world's ills.

Comedy is very strange to me and I don't fully understand it's purpose or function.

I think comedy's often the little and the large, isn't it?

Comedy becomes intensified in short scenes.

Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals.

I think you can tell the human condition better through comedy.

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

Comedians, we're just people who whine. But we happen to be funny when we whine. Like, if Jerry Seinfeld wasn't funny, you'd want to punch him in the face; he'd just seem like a whiner to you. But the fact is that he's funny.

My capacity for humour may have come largely from my father - he liked to entertain people, make people laugh.

I don't laugh that much, but I do like humorous books, and I like to entertain readers that way.

A sitcom isn't usually the right tool for satire.

I think comedy does have that powerful thing that doesn't seem too preachy because you're also making people laugh, so it's really kind of a good tool for messaging.

I'm a comic, and I'm supposed to outrage and make people laugh, Part of makin' people laugh is to shake up their thinkin'. That's what I came here to do.

I think I write funny songs that make people kind of, like, stop what they're doing and be like, 'What did you say?' And then it makes them laugh a little bit.

I don't think that there's necessarily a side to drama that has to be completely bleak. You have to have a flicker of humor 'cause everyone has a flicker of humor, something they find funny in life.

I would say most comedians have a very cynical worldview of the way the world can work. It's almost like if you didn't, you couldn't be a comedian.

In 'Malvolio,' the audience laugh at me, and I use that laughter to crack open the question as to why they are laughing.

As you know it is a comedy so everything is a little bit pushed. That's what's funny about this kind of movie is you can laugh about the absurdity, and the bad side of life.

Daddy was hilarious. He could take the most mundane event and tell it so that we all on the floor laughing. He trained me in the joys of humor.

Suspense is very important. Even though this is humor and they're short stories, that theory of building suspense is still there.