William F. Buckley Jr. Quotes

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.

I love funny women. I love writing funny women characters.

I really like comedy. There's always a choice, when you're writing: you can either go for the joke or you can go for the story, the important stuff.

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.

A good comic explores the imagination, but it's always got to have those notes of truth running through it.

(Referring to General Hugh Johnson, administrator of the National Recovery Administration:)) ... a comic opera cream puff.

The right honorable gentlemen is indebted to his memory for his jests, and to his imagination for his facts.

Show me a novel that's not comic, and I'll show you a novel that's not doing its job.

My notion of a great novel is something like a five-hundred-page shaggy-dog story, with only the punch line omitted.

I don't write punch lines.

I was never a joke teller. I don't even like jokes, for the most part. I don't like to hear them, and rarely can I even remember one.

What I always got excited about with 'Arrested Development' was the element of surprise.

I'm hypersensitive to negativity and duplicity, and I want to push it away by writing comedy. Maybe that hypersensitivity comes across and allows me to play dastardly, multi-layered people.

In TV writing, Armando Iannucci's satire 'The Thick of It' is brilliant - equal parts hysterically funny, terrifyingly believable, and Oh-my-God-I-can't-believe-he-actually-said-that - and it's got the most satisfyingly creative insults ever.

I think I always have Woody Allen in mind whenever I'm creating anything. He's such a genius, and I think 'Annie Hall' is one of the greatest movies ever written.

For me, the comedies that truly work are the ones that are grounded in some way. If it's all heightened, it's really hard. It's a little slippery. It's hard to get purchase on the side of the wall.

I think Noah Hawley's writing is hilarious, and I love a good dark joke.

In general, I think comedy is more difficult to write, to direct, and to act successfully.

If you have a character that doesn't have anything wrong with him, there's nothing funny about it. The idea of the straight man is very important. But I'd rather it be somebody else, because it's not as fun.

I prefer situational or character-based humor to gross-out gags and comedic set pieces.

I used to make training films for the U.S. government. I was always cast as a madman or a prisoner. I once played a prisoner who was holding himself hostage with a razor blade.

If all you have is satire, your show will close. Even if all you have is comedy, your show will close. The hardest thing is not making people laugh: the hardest thing is building an emotional story. Any child can make a group of adults laugh.

When we wrote 'Avenue Q,' we worked hard to create something that could be funny and satirical but also had some surprise moments of heart, moments when the music itself could become a central player and create something sweet and moving.

I have this old-man character named Glary Oldman. His apartment was on fire, but he was stubborn about leaving because he didn't want to leave all his stuff. I have a character called Berle, who lost 19 pounds, and now he's 600 pounds and very happy about it.

Comedy can take you a lot further in getting your point across. People are entertained, and then, by being entertained, they get your point.