David Ives Quotes

I call it predicament humor. You don't do anything that cuts the star off at the knees or worse. You make him intelligent; you give him great ideas and great things to do.

Now the point of comedy is not just looking funny, it's use of language. We have at our disposal a great language... and the imaginative, creative use of that language can be at the service of humour.

Humor writing is something that comes naturally to me.

I'll accept bad taste in a minute, as long as there's some great comedy minds and performances.

I'm a terrible punster. And I love to rhyme. I just can't help myself.

Plus, I love comic writing. Nothing satisfies me more than finding a funny way to phrase something.

I can't not write funny. It's literally the only way I know how to do it.

I still love a well-crafted joke. Twitter's been great for that.

Louis CK knows that just because a joke is using space as a resource instead of something to be crammed like a hamper, this doesn't mean a story isn't happening.

There's a certain line between jokes and music and poetry that's a bit blurred in my mind.

I think if you're trying to be funny, sometimes you're bending a piece of metal in a direction it doesn't want to go. And sometimes comedy just needs to find itself.

I get just as much of a thrill out of constructing a good sentence that gets a laugh at the end as I do from a joke.

The main problem with writing in verse is, if your fourth line doesn't come out right, you've got to throw four lines away and figure out a whole new way to attack the problem. So the mortality rate is terrific.

Humor writing requires a rhythm and timing, as well as some kind of connection to the reader, and I think that's how I tap into it.

Comedy, at least the way I write comedy, is just drama with jokes.

I love astute observations and really great wordplay. I love the way that Louis C.K. observes life, and I love the way Patton Oswalt talks about it.

Robert Benchley has a style that is weak and lies down frequently to rest.

I don't write punch lines.

I really like sardonicism and wit. I love the writing of Joy Williams and Lorrie Moore. I like Tina Fey, Amy Schumer.

Writing comedy is a superpower.

When I'm writing a lyric, things can only get so serious before they start becoming humorous.

Yea, marry, now it is somewhat, for now it is rhyme; before, it was neither rhyme nor reason.

Jerry Seinfeld is amazing in many ways, not the least of them his ability to find humor, and convincing us to find it, too, in the million-and-two details about modern life that under different circumstances might send us into paroxysms of rage.

You see, that's another thing that my parents gave me: an enormously great sense of humor.

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